Does ice help in healing sports injuries faster?

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Icing sports injuries, does it work?

I wanted to find out if putting ice on an injury or a tender joint actually helps improve healing.

Doctors and sports medicine people continually talk about icing as if it helps heal painful or swollen joints.

Icing is a common component of sports injury management.

Does ice help in healing sports injuries faster?

There are a lot of studies on icing knee surgery and injuries.

This makes it a lot easier to get some real numbers and find quality studies on knees.

But I also found one study on icing for sprains that we’ll discuss.

Our first study is going to be this Danish study:

Knee joint icing for 30 minutes shortly after total knee arthroplasty had no acute effect on knee extension strength or knee pain.

The icing had no effect.

This second study is from Japan.

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It shows a very low, but significant improvement from icing.

Most of the improvement was in lowering blood loss and lessening pain a bit after surgery:

This study found that icing had modest beneficial effects immediately after surgery.

And this third study talks about sprains rather than surgeries.

The people who received the ice for injuries got a bit of pain relief at the beginning.

One week after ankle injury, there were no significant differences between groups in terms of function, swelling, or pain at rest.

So basically I think ice may help your pain.

Go ahead and use a bit of ice.

But it’s not going to help you heal any better or any faster.

It may not harm, and it may not hurt.

But if it makes you comfortable, go ahead.

Just don’t believe any doctors who tell you that icing is going to help you heal faster or better.

Because it’s not true.


Matt Cook is editor-in-chief of Daily Medical Discoveries. Matt has been a full time health researcher for 26 years. ABC News interviewed Matt on sexual health issues not long ago. Matt is widely quoted on over 1,000,000 websites. He has over 300,000 daily newsletter readers. Daily Medical Discoveries finds hidden, buried or ignored medical studies through the lens of 100 years of proven science. Matt heads up the editorial team of scientists and health researchers. Each discovery is based upon primary studies from peer reviewed science sources following the Daily Medical Discoveries 7 Step Process to ensure accuracy.
Cryotherapy for acute ankle sprains: a randomized controlled study of two different icing protocols
http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/40/8/700.short 

Effect of knee joint icing on knee extension strength and knee pain early after total knee arthroplasty: a randomized cross-over study 
http://cre.sagepub.com/content/26/8/716.short 

The Effect of Cryotherapy on Intraarticular Temperature and Postoperative Care After Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction 
http://ajs.sagepub.com/content/27/3/357.short 

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