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Ice or Heat For Pulled Muscle

 

A common question amongst the injured is whether to use ice or heat for pulled muscle.  One of the most common causes of pain is damage caused by injury to our muscles or bones.   This trauma unfortunately causes disability that can last for many years. Lower back pain is the most common.  It  affects nearly four in ten adults in Europe and three in ten in the US. Unfortunately, it can be debilitating and last for many years.

It is hard to believe, but many people suffer from this chronic pain and do not seek medical treatment for it. Those that do tend to rely on over-the- counter anti-inflammatory or pain killing medications. They are also likely to use cold treatments to reduce the pain of the injured or damaged. So how does the cold help reduce pain?  Let’s talk about heat at the end of this article.

 

What Type of Cold Exposure

 

There is evidence that using cold treatments for pain, especially acute muscular pain after exercise, is effective. This can come in the form of a bag of frozen peas or ice wrapped up in a cloth.  It could be cold gel packs, or submerging the affected body part or even the whole body in very cold, or icy, water. The cold exposure to the damaged muscle works by numbing the area.  This effectively stops the pain messages being sent from the nerve endings to the brain. It also reduces blood flow.  That slows down the speed at which the chemicals that cause inflammation, get to the damaged area.

 

Managing Chronic vs Injury Pain

 

To back this up, a review of 17 scientific trials was undertaken.  They revealed that submerging the affected muscle in cold water considerably reduces pain when carried out at various time points after doing strenuous exercise. Those time points were twenty four, forty eight, seventy two, and ninety six hours after exercise, and were compared to not doing anything else to ease the pain.

However, the scientific evidence to back up this data is scarce. The majority of the research is based on the treatment of acute injuries rather than chronic pain. With that said, with back pain, the chronic pain is often a result of an acute injury.   It just has not been addressed in the first place. Hence, people are not seeking treatment and preferring to self-medicate. The point here is to administer cold exposure to the injury immediately.  Then continue on a regular basis to prevent acute pain from leading to life-long, chronic pain.

So the benefits of cold exposure are limited with regard to managing pain.   However, there is much more evidence to support the reduction of inflammation. And as inflammation is one of the contributing factors in many aspects of pain, this is good news.

 

Managing Inflammation

 

Monocytes are an important part of the immune system. They are a type of white blood cell, made in the bone marrow, that help the body fight infection. Monocytes are like the wardens of our health. They circulate in the blood stream until they are needed, which is when they spring into action. When they come across a pathogen, for instance a viral or bacterial cell, they move to where there is an infection, which causes inflammation. They then transform themselves into a macrophage.

Macrophages are cells that “eat” pathogens. They also release chemicals that help fight the infection, reducing the inflammation caused by these bacterial and viral invaders. Monocytes can also protect against Alzheimer’s disease and fibrosis by helping to clear away the inflammatory aspects of these diseases, such as plaques in the brain.

 

Brain and Spinal Cord Benefits

 

Cold exposure can also benefit the brain in other ways, as it has also been shown to reduce inflammation in the brain and spinal cord. In addition, the benefits of cold exposure extend to reducing auto-immune diseases, many of which are also caused by inflammation.  These include inflammatory bowel disease and rheumatoid arthritis (10). With that said, an effective treatment for the pain and inflammation of rheumatoid arthritis that has already established itself in the body is to use cold therapy in the form of an ice pack.

Regular exposure to cold water, such as swimming in open water or having ice baths, has been shown to boost the production of monocytes, which in turn reduce inflammation.  The other way that cold exposure reduces inflammation is due to the fact that it increases the levels of the hormone melanocortin adrenocorticotropin, which has the knock-on effect of increasing cortisol .

Both of these hormones play a part in reducing inflammation due to their action on immune cells. On top of that, cold exposure increases norepinephrine (also known as noradrenalin). This hormone can help reduce pain. The downside of this is that the exposure to the cold must be on a long term, regular basis, and you should be in good health.

 

Drawbacks to Cold Exposure 

 

The reason you must be in good health is that, in a cruel twist of nature, monocytes, while protecting us from infection by viruses and bacteria, can also play a part in the progression of some inflammatory diseases. These include atherosclerosis, which is the build-up of fatty deposits and plaques in the blood vessels; cancer metastasis, which is the spread of cancer cells from the original site to other places in the body; and multiple sclerosis, which is a degenerative disease that affects the brain and nervous system. For this reason, it is not advised to use cold exposure if you have been diagnosed with cancer, multiple sclerosis, or atherosclerosis.

 

On the Flip Side

 

On the flip side, cold exposure has been shown to reduce the growth of cancer cells. Cancer feeds on glucose, but so does brown fat, which is stimulated by the cold. In other words, brown fat activation gets first dibs on the glucose, which means cancer cells cannot feed. If they cannot feed, they cannot grow. However, reducing the intake of glucose, sugar, and carbohydrates in the diet is also necessary alongside cold exposure.

That is because there is a limit to how much glucose the brown fat requires. As inflammation is one of the main causes of cancer,  taking regular cold showers can be helpful.  Along with a healthy lifestyle can help reduce your risk of developing this awful disease.

As you may have realized, the relationship between cold exposure and inflammation is complicated.   Even so, the overall conclusion is that taking cold showers alongside a healthy diet and lifestyle will boost your immunity .  They will also reduce the risk of developing diseases linked to inflammation

 

Turn Up the Heat with ThermoTherapy

 

At the introduction of the article I promised to address heat therapy.  In this abbreviated attention, the basic tenet is this.  Ice reduces pain and inflammation.  Heat relaxes muscles and improves blood flow.  So after a football game, players go into the ice tub, and before a game players indulge in heated balms or wraps to limber them up.

When I tore up the tendons in my thumb, once a week I saw a physiotherapist or 10 weeks.   My favorite part of the therapy was hot wax immersion.  It made my hand feel So good!  The idea being the heat loosened up my poor hand and then the physio gave me a nice massage.  I was going to buy a wax immersion kit, and I hesitated but would recommend the treatment to anyone.

Below, check out a couple of excellent articles that expand on heat for therapy.

Click here for an interesting article on cryotherapy from Cochrane Library.

Click here for an article from SpineHealth.com on heat therapy for the back.

Another click for a thermotherapy overview from physio-therapy.com