I have participated in many organized sports throughout my life. When I was young I played little league baseball and and pee wee football, both of which developed into high school football and baseball. When I was not playing organized sports, my younger self was always outside, whether it be playing basketball, climbing trees, riding bikes, or swimming in the pool. As you could imagine, the amount bumps, bruises and cuts I would come home with was too much for my mom to keep track of. Regardless of the injury, I would always be handed an ice pack and was told it would make me feel better. Even into high school, the athletic trainer would give me ice for any sort of injury I got in a sport. I never questioned this and always assumed it was my best course of action in recovery. Recently, there have been increasing articles popping up online questioning the effectiveness of using ice for recovery. These articles came as a shock to me at first, but the basis for them is certainly warranted, after all, I don’t know why icing helps, I’ve only been told that it does. In any case, these articles peaked my curiosity, so I will be analyzing this topic further.
(image via health.howstuffworks.com)
The phenomenon of icing an injury became popular in large part due to Dr. Gabe Mirkin. Mirkin came up with the acronym RICE (rest, ice, compression, and elevation) in his 1978 book Sports Medicine Book. Since then, the RICE method of recovery has been used widely throughout sports medicine, but even Mirkin has gone back on the phrase he once made famous. Mirkin says, “there is no data to show that ice does anything more than block pain”, and he adds “And there is data that shows it delays healing.” (Source for both quotes here)
One study that points to ice not helping was done by the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. In this study, eleven male subjects did sex sets of tricep extensions at 85% maximum capacity to failure. Then they were randomly split up and some of them were given cooling treatments while others were not. The cooling treatments were administered for 15 minutes at a time and done 0,3,24,48,72 hours after completion of the exercise. The study found that those who were given the cooling treatment actually recovered slower than those who were not. Another study done by the British Journal of Sports Medicine notes that, “Ice is commonly used after acute muscle strains but there are no clinical studies of its effectiveness.” There are no real studies that point to ice helping to recover from injuries, yet it is one of the most commonly practiced techniques in sports medicine. Icing injuries is commonplace, and to find out there is no scientific backing to it came as a shock to me.
In conclusion, the world of sports medicine needs to reevaluate the way it uses ice in the rehabbing process. There is no scientific evidence behind the use of ice, but there are dozens of studies pointing against it. Until any sort of study comes out that points to ice helping to aid recovery time, I will stay away from it.
This so interesting that is no scientific study saying that icing doesn’t work. I have always iced my injuries after getting them to help with the pain and bring down the swelling. A lot of my doctors suggest that you should change between ice and heat to help with pain. I personally don’t think that ice or heat really work so therefore after i get my injury i very rarely use ice or heat. I think they need to come up with other methods to help with injuries immediately.
This article got me thinking about the benefit of other mom-prescribed treatments. For example, does heat also have a damaging effect on healing? Furthermore, does the benefit of the temporary pain relief outweigh the potential healing delay? I would be curious to see more research on this subject applied to both severe injuries and minor injuries.
I found this post to be very interesting! I too played football and baseball growing up as well in high school so I’m sure our mothers were in the same boat for the amount of cuts and bruises we obtained throughout the years. I feel that icing wasn’t so much for pain as it was to reduce the swelling of the bruise which would reduce the amount of time we would have it on our bodies. Granted, icing with the whole 15 minutes on 15minutes off deal does that area go numb causing us not to feel pain, I do feel like, like I previously stated, was more to reduce the swelling and ultimately reduce the amount of time we have the bruise rather than to reduce the amount of pain we endure.
I have played sports my entire life, so this blog is very interesting to me. I can’t count the amount of times I have followed the RICE strategy. It is crazy to see that this may not even be the best method. I would be very curious to see more studies done on this.