Today, I want to address the lifelong debate - Ice or Heat? There may always be a few exceptions to the rule, but for the most part, I'm going to give you a basic guideline to follow to make the situations you find yourself in, easier.If you have a new injury or a fresh injury, maybe you rolled an ankle, bent down and felt your back twinge, or even just woke up with a neck kink, if it's new then you 100% of the time should be using ice.
In a perfect world, you should be icing an injury for 15 minutes at a time, every hour. Unfortunately, this may not be possible while leading a busy life, so focus more on icing your injury as much as you can, as the more you ice, the quicker you'll receive positive results.
The reason that you don't want to use heat in those circumstances is because there's always inflammation. Where most people struggle with this is with back pain. We don't see any inflammation on our backs because there's such a thick muscle between where the inflamed joint is and the skin, but we feel that spasm and it often feels like heat will be good for it and in some cases, people will swear by heat. If it's worked for you in the past, fine, keep using it. The danger with heat in those circumstances though is, while you feel good immediately, one to two hours later, you'll often feel worse because the heat is bringing in more blood flow, which means more inflammation, which means you're stuck in this pain cycle.
Someone who suffers from chronic injuries and maybe has had back pain every day for 10 years, may swear by heat, but what we've been finding in our clinic, and what a lot of the research is finding is, ice still works very well in those circumstances. Even though you may have a more chronic problem, its still getting irritated every day, so you're getting fresh inflammation on top of it. But, you have to be more consistent with it, more so than with a fresh injury, otherwise it will do nothing. If you ice once and then don't ice for two days, you won't get anywhere in that circumstance.
Now, when do we recommend to use heat? If you're someone who has some arthritis and is very stiff, let's say you like to play golf but it takes you half a round to feel like your back is loosened up, or you're a tennis player and it's so hard to serve, you would use heat before that activity to get everything going - hot shower in the morning, a heat pack on the shoulder, the back, wherever you need it, and then go and do that activity. Afterwards, go back to the ice because you're going to create some inflammation.
Remember, in the big scheme of things, ice will never make you worse, but heat potentially can, so that's what you want to keep in mind when you're struggling with which method to use.
If you have any questions or a specific injury that you'd like some more advice on, please contact us or leave a comment below, we are always happy to help in any way we can. Also, please share this blog post with anyone you think might benefit from this information.
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