Posted on October 04 2012
January 20, 2011 By Skyler Meine
Ice and heat treatment for injury and soreness is one of the oldest tricks in the physical therapy book. Over the years you probably have heard of many different protocols for how to utilize ice and heat treatment to improve recovery from injury. Lets make sure that you know exactly what you should be doing.
The hated, at least by most people, ice treatment should be used during the first 48 hours to reduce swelling and inflammation. Ice compression should be done for 10-15 minutes and repeated 30 minutes after ice is removed from the injured area for the first couple hours after the injury. Then reduced to 10-15 minutes every couple of hours. Don’t over-do it because ice can cause frost bite. For overuse injuries ice can be used at the end of a workout to help control inflammation. But don’t ever ice these areas before a workout or sporting event it will reduce performance.
Heat is the treatment that most people look forward to. Heat helps relax and loosen muscles, and gets blood flowing to that area. It is recommend that heat treatments shouldn’t be done for more than 15-20 minutes and area shouldn’t be swollen or inflamed. Heat can be used for overuse injuries before an activity to get your blood flowing to that area.
Ice and heat treatment has come a long way since the days when I would sprain my ankle and put ice in a bag and use an ace bandage to hold it on the injured area. Now there are hot cold wraps that are designed for specific areas of the body and gels that can be warmed or frozen. The ice and compression of the R.I.C.E. model are now taken care of with one easy solution. You only need one cold hot pack for injuries, instead of multiple physical therapy systems.
ActiveWrap, a company I was recently introduced to, produces these hot cold wraps and they gave me the opportunity to try them out. I liked how comfortable the ankle ice/heat wrap and the knee ice/heat wrap were to wear. I didn’t have to constantly adjust them or have to lay perfectly still to get the desired effect. If you have any overuse injuries or would just like to have something available for those rare ankle sprains, ActiveWrap makes effective cold hot packs for injuries that you want available.
We will be giving an active wrap product away today on our giveaway page www.facebook.com/myfitnessdeals. To receive an additional entry in our giveaway leave a comment at the end of this post. Active wrap is also offering all of our readers $5 off any orders you make for the next 30 days if you use the coupon code: FITDEAL5.