Cryotherapy for Recovery: What are the Pros and Cons- Thomas DeLauer:
Cryotherapy may not be the best way to recover, but it certainly has some long term benefits! Learn more at www.ThomasDeLauer.com
Cryotherapy is the cooling of body parts for therapeutic purposes. Whole-body cryotherapy (WBC) is the practice of exposing the body for short periods of 2 to 5 minutes to temperatures lower than -100 degrees Celsius, or -212 degrees Fahrenheit. Participants will wear clothing to protect their heads, hands and feet from extreme cold to reduce any risk of injury from the cold. It was originally started in the hopes of treatment for chronic medical conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, and is now popular for athletes as it is said to heal recovery from workouts and injuries. More and more people are using WBC for their general health and wellbeing.
A 2014 study published in the Open Access Journal of Sports Medicine looked at ten studies that researched WBC for empirical evidence of benefits. Most of the studies were done with young (under 35), athletic participants. As our skin is a protective barrier from outside elements and air is a poor thermal conductor, WBC does not offer extensive subcutaneous and core body cooling. Ice packs were found to cause the greatest cooling, while WBC and cold-water therapy baths were found to cool to about the same extend.
Some of the studies found evidence that following intense exercise, WBC reduced subjective feelings of muscle recovery from soreness and fatigue with not much benefit to functional recovery. This means that participants reported feeling less soreness in the muscles, however, the markers of muscle damage were the same following exercise when WBC groups were compared to control groups. This is likely the placebo effect, where you expect to feel something so your mind believes that this is happening, even though there is no scientific support for this belief.
There were one study that found WBC to be associated with higher strength and lower fatigue following exercise, however the study may suffer from detection bias because as blinding outcome assessors were not used. There is weak evidence that WBC increases antioxidant and parasympathetic reaction, and aids in inflammatory pathways applicable to exercise recovery.
One study did find that WBC helped patient recovery from adhesive capsulitis of the shoulder. Those who had this shoulder injury were randomly assigned to one of two groups, either physiotherapy only or physiotherapy and WBC. After four week those in the WBC group had significant improvement when compared to the physiotherapy only group.
Another study published in 2016 in the Acta Neurologica Scandinavica looked at multiple sclerosis (MS) patients and found an improvement in fatigue and functional status for both a low fatigue and a high fatigue group. There was no control group in this study, but the findings are promising when it comes to chronic medical conditions. In these studies there were no adverse effects of WBC found, however there was not extensive monitoring.
Tips:
Studies without bias that show benefits are still limited, but they do exist. As cold-water therapy (a bath of around 8 degrees Celsius for 4 minutes) and ice packs are less expensive, it may benefit individuals to try these treatments as an alternative to WBC to see how they respond to each. That being said, if you have experienced benefits from WBC there are thus far no negative effects found, so it is safe and could be beneficial to continue therapy.
References:
1. Whole body cryotherapy: empirical evidence and theoretical perspectives
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
2. Whole body cryostimulation provides…
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2...
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