Posted on 04/04/2023 8:17:01 PM PDT by ConservativeMind
Applying ice to a muscle injury is a widespread first-aid treatment, but exactly what effect does this have on the muscle regeneration and does it really help? Cumulative research by a multi-institutional Japanese research collaboration reveals that "to ice or not to ice" may depend on the degree of muscle injury.
In their latest research, the group have shown that applying ice to muscle damage in a small percentage of muscle fibers in rats promotes muscle regeneration. This is believed to be the first study in the world to show benefits of icing on muscle repair.
Macrophages are immune cells that orchestrate the reparative process of injured muscle. Pro-inflammatory macrophages accumulate in the damaged site soon after injury occurs, however they express an inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), which has a disadvantageous side-effect of expanding the injury's size. The results of this team's experiments revealed that icing after mild muscle injury reduces the accumulation of iNOS-expressing pro-inflammatory macrophages (Figure 3). By causing this phenomenon, icing prevents the expansion of muscle injury size (Figure 3).
In other words, icing attenuates the recruitment of pro-inflammatory macrophages in the injury site. This was also reported in their previous study, demonstrating that this is an effect caused by icing regardless of whether the muscle injury is serious or mild. In the previous study, icing was found to delay the regeneration of muscle after a serious injury that destroyed many fibers because the pro-inflammatory macrophages were unable to sufficiently phagocytose the injured muscle. In contrast to this, the current study shows that icing has a positive effect when the muscle injury is mild because it prevents the secondary expansion of the muscle injury caused by the pro-inflammatory macrophages. It suggests that this particular effect of icing is connected to the promotion of muscle regeneration.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
I prefer icing on cakes, but not on pies.
Dark chocolate icing...Who knew it was miracle medicine......
Old news to experienced horsemen.
Cold water from a hose and ice boots from the knee to the fetlock have been in use for many years on injured performance horses.
I have sat on a stump holding a lead rope in one hand and a cold hose in the other for a 30 minute treatment, repeated several times each day, until the heat and swelling is gone.
The cold hose has repaired many a big knee.
When I worked at a large grocery store, the large frozen peas package was perfect for a variety of small, and not so small, dings, dunks, and injuries from those large wood pallets. If you apply the cold (peas) RIGHT AFTER the incident, the amount of initial swelling is less, which aides in the overall recovery. It is amazing how quickly (days) you can recover (instead of a week or more). While ice cubes in ziplock baggy works, I still have frozen peas in the freezer. It molds evenly to the area needing the cold.
The recent A Star Is Born movie used frozen peas to treat a hand injury.
After I broke my ankle and it was put back together with screws the incisions healed up enough after about 10 days that the doc had removed the cast and had me alternate between ice water and as hot as I could stand hot water soaks. 5 minutes in each and I had to keep the hot water hot. After a few days of that the swelling was dramatically reduced. When I twist my ankle or wrist I use that to this day.
One day my husband walked trhough the front door with blood dripping down his face. He had just walked a mile home from the street where he was hit by a car in both legs, slid up to the windshield where he banged his head and broke the window. He said they wanted to take him to the hospital, but he said: “I don’t want to sit 3 or 4 hours in an emergency room waiting for care, I’ll do better at home.”
I spent 1/2 hour with tweezers picking about 50 shards of glass out of his forehead. Then I put him to bed with his head elevated and cold compresses to reduce risk of concussion. He had bruising on the sides of both lower and upper legs. I put bags of frozen peas or corn (don’t remember which as this was 40 years ago) on the 2 worst bruises and cold compresses on the rest as I only had two bags of veggies. The next day the two less bruised areas that did not have the frozen veggies looked much worse than the veggie treated areas.
thanks
bkmk
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