To ice or not to ice after Injury?

Ice can be very effective if applied immediately after an injury, to limit the extent of the injury, or during the recovery phase to help reduce pain and swelling.

Excessive inflammation and swelling from an acute sports injury can lead to a secondary injury occurring. Ice is a relatively safe way of limiting any secondary injury you may suffer after an acute injury, while not impeding your bodies healing process.

Ice works by decreasing our body’s inflammatory response. However we also know that the inflammatory response is very important during the first few days of the healing process and you could argue that you might hinder your healing process by using ice. Read further to find out why.

Some studies have found that taking anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS and corticosteroids) can interfere with our bodies healing process. These drugs stay in our system for 6 hours or longer whereas the cooling effect of ice only lasts a few minutes.

Anti-inflammatory drugs have a direct effect on how the inflammatory chemicals work in our tissues, whist ice mainly affects swelling through decreasing circulation of our blood to the injured area. Don’t take anti inflammatory drugs in the first few days after an injury as these drugs also have an anti- coagulant effect which means they increase bleeding – definitely not what you want to do after an injury!

Immediately after an injury

• Ice should be used immediately after sustaining an injury to decrease the amount of bleeding and swelling. This is important since both excessive bleeding and excessive swelling will cause an increase in the pressure on the tissues and cells adjacent to the injury.
• This increased pressure can cut off the blood and oxygen supply to the adjacent, undamaged cells causing them to die. This is referred to as a secondary injury because it wasn’t caused by the same incident that caused the first injury.
• Excessive swelling or bleeding will cause an injury to be more severe and take longer time frame to heal.

How to apply Ice

• Always have a wet towel or cloth between your skin and the ice to prevent it from burning your skin.
• Apply the ice for 10 minutes with gentle compression over the injured area. I use regular cling film to wrap around the body part. It keeps the ice in place and also provides compression to help stop bleeding.
• Do not leave the ice on for more than 10 minutes or use strong compression as this can have the opposite effect.
• It also helps to stop the bleeding if you can have the body part elevated in a supported position above the level of your heart.

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