Cold Therapy

A Quick Look at Cryotherapy

Heat and cold are at the opposite ends of the spectrum, but they often go hand in hand when treating pain. And like thermotherapy, cryotherapy is amazing since it uses extremes in temperature in order to achieve good results. You’d think that anything ‘extreme’ would be bad, but amazingly, scientists have found a way to work the effects of cold to our advantage.

What is cryotherapy?

Cryotherapy involves the use of extremely cold temperatures to make irritated nerve endings numb, thereby relieving the pain in a certain body part. If you’ve ever stayed out in the cold for quite a while, you’ll know how numb your body parts can get after being exposed to cold for a long time. Its use ranges from the simple procedure of placing ice pack over the painful body part to relieve swelling to serious and complicated procedures like cryosurgery, which involves blasting a nerve ending using a probe and extreme cold to deaden it.

Another type of cryotherapy is whole body cryotherapy. Here, the patient is asked to enter a chamber which is cooled through liquid nitrogen to a temperature of -110 degrees Celsius. The patient dons socks, gloves, mouth, and ear protectors to keep him safe from frostbites. But the rest of the body is covered only by a bathing suit. Due to the cold, the endorphins are released, and analgesia is incurred, meaning that there is immediate numbing and pain relief. This treatment is popular among the athletes.

There are, however, times that being exposed to cold can leave you with a numb tingling sensation and a bit of redness. This is a side effect that’s merely temporary so it’s really nothing to be worried about.

Cryotherapy and Pain Relief

Interestingly, cryotherapy relieves the same kind of pain as its opposite, thermotherapy, does. Of course, by treating cancer, it also relieves the pain caused by cancer. It is commonly used to treat intercostals neuralgia, cluneal nerve entrapment, hypogastric neuromas, ilioinguinal neuroma, lateral femoral cutaneous nerve entrapment, interdigital neuromas, and all the other forms of neuromas.

But cryotherapy is more popular amongst athletes who commonly complain about muscle stiffness and joint pain, especially in the case of rheumatism.  It is also said to treat stress and insomnia, just like thermotherapy. It also treats fibromyalgia, itching, and psoriasis.

Some people also use cold packs to relieve the pain especially after surgeries. Cold temperatures cause the blood vessels to constrict and thereby lessen bleeding. This serves as a double purpose especially after surgery because cold packs also cause numbing of the nerve endings.