So you just hurt yourself. The question is now, what do I do? You've heard, always ice immediately after an injury, right? It's the sensible thing to do. But is this actually good advice or just nonsense? Before we can come to a conclusion on whether or not to ice, it's important to understand a few other assumptions about icing:
So you have a few different arguments out there. Some say never ice because it will reduce the speed of healing. Others believe that ice will help do the opposite and reduce damage after an injury. So what are we to do?
Fortunately for us we have some very smart researchers out there to help guide us. Chris Bleakley is one of those smart folks and he answered this question very well in his presentation at Sports Kongres you can check out HERE: I've summarized the key points to his talk below:
In conclusion we don't really know if icing has a net positive or net negative effect on inflammation after an injury. On top of that ice isn't even effective enough to change inflammation after an injury in humans so it doesn't really matter anyway. Lastly, ice is a cheap and effective way to reduce pain after an injury so if your goal is decreasing pain then go for it! Just make sure you don't keep the ice on too long to cause damage.
If you want some specific guidance on how to get out of pain after an injury and how to get back to weight training in the gym then click on one of the links below to get started:
I actually like ice in my drink best,
Dan Pope DPT, OCS, CSCS
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