The Ultimate Guide to Cryotherapy

Foam rollers were so early 2000s.

Now it’s 2023 (we guess that technically still counts as early), and recovery methods have modified. So as an alternative of grimacing in pain as your gym partner rolls over your muscles with various sticks, you now get to make use of cold air or frigid water to support your recovery.

We will not explain why all recovery methods (apart from sleep) should be accompanied by pain, but we do know one thing: Cryotherapy has seen a dramatic rise in popularity through the years. And together with that popularity, there was a flood of fine and not-so-good information.

Discerning the data is even harder because there are several types of cryotherapy treatment. Because of this, research from one type of cryotherapy could be wrongly applied to a different.

But don’t be concerned! In the event you’re focused on cryotherapy, after reading this text, you may know all the things you want to use it effectively.

Table of Contents:

• What Is Cryotherapy?
• A Transient History of Cryotherapy
• How Does Cryotherapy Work?
• Cryotherapy vs. Cold Water Therapy: What Are The Differences?
• Different Sorts of Cryotherapy
• Cryotherapy Uses
• Who Should & Shouldn’t Use Cryotherapy
• Advantages of Cryotherapy
• Downsides of Cryotherapy
• Is Cryotherapy Protected?
• What to Expect Before, During, & After Cryotherapy
• Best Suggestions For Getting The Most Out Of Cryotherapy
• Common Cryotherapy Mistakes
• Where Can You Do Cryotherapy?
• What To Do After A Cryotherapy Session
• FAQs

What’s Cryotherapy?

Cryotherapy involves exposing your body to very cold temperatures in the shape of air. Liquid nitrogen can be used in additional sophisticated machines. Depending in your specific goals and intent, the temperature could also be directed toward your entire body or only one area.

Along with getting used as a recovery method, cryotherapy can be used to destroy abnormal cells, as seen with skin cancer, and even freeze warts. On this instance, below-freezing temperatures are used. Other times it might be used to change hormonal profiles. For this example, barely warmer (but still very cold) temps is likely to be used.

What else should you understand about cryotherapy? Well, among the top athletes on this planet swear by, or have sworn by, cryotherapy, including Stephen Curry, Lebron James, the late Kobe Bryant, and the fastest man on this planet, Usain Bolt.

As well as, the cryotherapy total market share in 2021 was slightly below $7 billion. Analysts project this to grow by 7% yearly until 2030¹.

A Transient History of Cryotherapy

The usage of very cold temperatures each for medicinal purposes and therapy date back to the early Egyptians. In truth, even Hippocrates noted that cold temps could be used as a treatment for swelling and pain².

But because the medical practice we all know today, cryotherapy is definitely quite recent. The primary time it was used professionally within the medical field was in 1978 by a Japanese rheumatologist named Toshima Yamaguchi.

As he was mainly focused on non-invasive methods to scale back pain, he examined the usage of freezing cold therapy to mitigate the symptoms of arthritis. He concluded that cold therapy effectively decreases pain and provides relief as a consequence of the body being flooded with endorphins.

The usage of cold therapy grew as a consequence of its effectiveness, and various cold chambers were invented to reveal your complete body to cold temperatures.

How Does Cryotherapy Work?

Cryotherapy involves placing your body in an extreme environment, often just for a number of minutes. Subsequently, it ought to be no surprise that it invokes several physiological adaptations.

The primary major response is the narrowing of your blood vessels called vasodilation, which slows down blood flow, potentially reducing inflammation and swelling.

Attributable to the acute cold, all the things will move slower, including the speed at which your cells produce energy. At the identical time, your body may have to provide more energy to maintain itself warm, which is why we shiver. It is a mechanism that causes us to provide heat internally, just like understanding.

The last major response involves your body being flooded with various chemicals. The first chemicals secreted are dopamine and norepinephrine, each of which are accountable for the “feel-good” sensation and reduce in pain and discomfort.

Cryotherapy vs Cold Water Therapy: What Are The Differences?

Although cryotherapy is typically used as a universal term for cold treatment, it’s distinctively different from cold water therapy. The essential difference is that cold water therapy uses, well, water!

As well as, the term cold therapy can confer with a bunch of treatments, including cold water immersion, cold showers, ice baths, and even an ice pack.

During cold therapy with water, the temperatures are generally significantly warmer than with cryotherapy. It is because the water would freeze if it reached the low temperatures of cryotherapy.

Because of this, cold water therapy is more commonly used for muscle & workout recovery and other therapeutic uses.

Different Sorts of Cryotherapy

As mentioned above, there are numerous types of cryotherapy treatment to pick from. We’re going to concentrate on the 2 commonest types used for workout and muscle recovery after which will mention the opposite types briefly, that are used more for medicinal purposes³.

1) Whole-body cryotherapy:

Whole-body cryotherapy (WBC) is a type of cryotherapy wherein an individual fully enters an enclosed cryotherapy chamber. Once inside, the door is closed to create a decent room.

From here, electricity is used to drop the temperature inside.

2) Partial-body cryotherapy:

Partial-body cryotherapy is rather more common than whole-body cryotherapy. And although it’s called partial, it should really be called “all the things but the pinnacle,” because it’s mainly a cryotherapy chamber wherein your head stands proud.

Partial-body cryotherapy uses liquid nitrogen to drop the temperature in a partially closed system. Apart from your head, all the things else is exposed to freezing temperatures.

This is usually essentially the most common type of cryotherapy treatment, especially for supporting muscle recovery and treating muscle pain.

3) Other Types of Cryotherapy:

There are multiple other types of cryotherapy used for medicinal purposes. Here’s a temporary overview.

Cryoblation, also generally known as cryosurgery, is a type of cryotherapy treatment that uses extremely cold air that’s localized to a smaller point. It’s used to kill damaged or diseased tissue. One of the common examples of that is the freezing of warts.

As well as, a neighborhood cryo-stimulation device is one in every of the types of cryotherapy that attacks a localized area. It uses a tool to deliver liquid nitrous oxide to a small location and produce the temperatures all the way down to 25° to -40° F. That is what’s commonly used to treat diseased tissue similar to skin tags.

Technology in cold therapy has advanced up to now that doctors can now treat areas of the body underneath the skin. This is finished through a tool called a cryoprobe, a probe that is placed into an incision within the body and able to generating very low temperatures. The immune system then clears any the abornmal cells that were frozen as a part of the inner cryotherapy process.

Cryoneurolysis is a procedure that uses a small probe that is placed below the skin next to a peripheral nerve. The probe then cools the nerve using nitrous oxide, which effectively “freezes” it for a time period. Studies have shown that it might be an efficient method to assist numb and mitigate pain, similar to back pain.

Cryotherapy Uses

Through the years, the usage of cryotherapy has expanded and is now used for a wide range of conditions.

Again, we will concentrate on health and wellness advantages here, but it surely’s necessary to notice that cryotherapy can be used for removing diseased tissue, like warts, or cancerous cells, like basal cell carcinoma. As well as, it’s used to destroy abnormal tissue and treat low-risk cancer, like pancreatic cancer, improve skin health, and treat mood disorders.

With that, here’s a have a look at 3 ways it’s utilized by athletes and gym goers.

1) Improve Muscle Recovery:

Cryotherapy has turn out to be so popular up to now few years as a consequence of its prevalent use amongst athletes for recovery. Certainly one of the mechanisms that’s believed to enhance recovery is the vasoconstriction of blood vessels.

When the body experiences extremely cold temperatures, the blood vessels constrict or get narrower. This leads to less blood circulation and blood supply to the affected area, leading to the world seeing less inflammation and swelling.

As an added bonus, this improvement in recovery could also be accompanied by improvements in work capability and performance⁴.

2) Mitigate Muscle Pain:

One other variable just like muscle recovery is muscle pain. Note that these two variables could also be related but are, in truth, distinct attributes. And the evidence for reducing muscle pain appears to be smaller than that of recovery.

Take these two meta-analyses, for instance, which concluded that there’s little evidence to suggest cryotherapy reduces muscle pain, specifically discomfort that happens with DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness)^5,6.

It is vital to notice that regular use of cryotherapy has been shown to numb the nerves and sensations around local points, temporarily relieving pain, so this may occasionally help those with chronic pain and even those in search of temporary relief from muscle pain post-workout.

It’s just not going to be a long-term solution.

3) Weight Loss:

Many individuals will try to use cryotherapy to assist them shiver off the fat. When the body is placed in a chilly environment, it must generate its own heat in a process generally known as cryo-thermogenesis. This event is factual and an acknowledged phenomenon.

Nevertheless, true cryotherapy just isn’t prone to be effective for weight reduction as a consequence of its short duration. Keep in mind that cryotherapy only lasts 3-5 minutes. Subsequently, you’d should be burning 2,000 calories an hour simply to burn 100 during that time-frame.

The purpose is that any extra calories burned ought to be seen as one in every of the additional (and smaller) advantages of cryotherapy, not the essential reason for doing it. Again, all signs point back to using it for muscle recovery for best results.

For those attempting to drop some weight, you are a lot better off following a workout split and proper eating regimen.

Who Should Use Cryotherapy?

The list of who should use cryotherapy is extensive. Cancer patients, those with nerve damage, and people with chronic muscle pain may all want to contemplate using cryotherapy.

And relevant to this text, the advantages of cryotherapy could be very advantageous for athletes, especially those with demanding schedules, as it is vital that they recuperate from training or a game as quickly as possible.

Athletes aren’t going to have 2-3 days to completely recuperate as they’ll play each day, sometimes even twice a day! In the event that they can recuperate faster, they’ll have the advantage.

You’ll be able to learn more about how athletes utilize cold water therapy in our article: Why Do Athletes Take Ice Baths?

Who Should Avoid Cryotherapy?

While cryotherapy is usually secure, there are some groups who should avoid it. Here’s a glance.

1) Advanced Diabetic Patients:

Although cryotherapy may help diabetic patients by improving nerve function and circulation, it will possibly be detrimental to advanced patients⁷. That is as a consequence of having very poor circulation and an inability to feel.

If you might have diabetes, speak along with your doctor before trying cryotherapy.

2) Those With Low Blood Pressure Or Blood Circulation Problems:

Attributable to the vasoconstriction of the blood vessels, there’ll routinely be less blood flow. In healthy individuals, this is not a difficulty.

Nevertheless, should you already suffer from issues with blood circulation, further decreasing the body’s ability to pump blood can amount to numerous health issues similar to low blood pressure, dizziness, and lack of consciousness⁸.

3) Lifters Interested In Muscle Gain:

Certainly one of the interesting opposed effects of cryotherapy is that it seems to mitigate the anabolic process and muscle growth. That is believed to be as a consequence of the disruption within the inflammation process, as it is a critical a part of the technique of muscle hypertrophy.

To be clear, muscle growth and muscle recovery are two distinct phenomena⁹. So, while an athlete may give you the option to recuperate from a workout faster using cryotherapy, it’s going to not be accompanied by greater muscle gains.

Subsequently, anyone who’s training with the only intent of constructing muscle should avoid using cryotherapy for post-workout recovery.

Advantages of Cryotherapy

The advantages of cryotherapy are vast. As we went over above, cryotherapy could be used as a treatment for:

• Low-risk cancer
• Removal of abnormal tissue
• Skin conditions
• Mental state

Along with their unique applications, as a complete, cryotherapy offers an economical, non-invasive therapy that has potentially high advantages.

And, during the last decade or so, there was a resurgence of cryotherapy use as a consequence of gym-goers utilizing it as a type of post-training recovery.

Many of the advantages of cryotherapy for muscle recovery come from vasodilation, numbing of the world, and the discharge of chemicals. Combined, these are in a position to provide acute pain relief while decreasing inflammation and swelling for long-term relief.

Cryotherapy Risks & Side Effects

Cryotherapy is usually secure but can have several downsides, especially should you don’t follow the rules.

Listed here are essentially the most common negative effects:

• Pain at the positioning of therapy
• Redness of the affected area
• Fainting
• Blistering
• Frostbite

One area that’s of special concern is nerve damage. When the body is consistently exposed to extreme cold, the lipids within the myelin sheath of a nerve can solidify. This could result in the arrest of the nerve motor, leading to no sensation. If a chilly application is sustained, it will possibly eventually result in the everlasting lack of sensation from that nerve.

Again, lots of these risks could be mitigated, if not eliminated altogether, by simply following the rules regarding the ideal cryotherapy time-frame.

Is Cryotherapy Protected?

Yes, cryotherapy is usually secure so long as you follow the established guidelines. Keep in mind that you’re placing your body in an extreme environment. Subsequently, you possibly can put yourself in danger once you begin going past the recommendations.

Cryotherapy Safety Suggestions

Follow these safety tricks to optimize your cryotherapy sessions.

1. Never stay in for longer than the prescribed time.
2. Don’t use cryotherapy each day for an prolonged time period. This is very true for localized cryotherapy.
3. Use the right safety gear and protocols depending on the tactic used. This includes keeping your extremities covered and using a barrier to avoid direct application.

What to Expect Before, During, & After Cryotherapy

Concerned about cryotherapy but want an idea of what to anticipate? Here’s what to know before, during, and after a cryotherapy session.

Before Your Session:

There’s not much so that you can do before your session. Other than getting prepared, you only need to point out up! You will likely feel a bit anxious and even excited. This is not bad but attempt to mitigate it as much as possible, as it will possibly exacerbate any shock.

During Your Session:

Once contained in the cryotherapy chamber, your session will begin. Keep in mind that once it begins, it only lasts 3 minutes. During this time, you’ll experience a rush of utmost cold temperatures.

This will be kind of uncomfortable, depending on the person, and is typically considered painful. It is important that you are attempting to stay as calm as possible during this time. We recommend you concentrate on respiration exercises to maintain your vitals at appropriate levels.

After Your Session:

Once your session is finished, you’ll warm up, and your discomfort should begin to subside. You could be offered a pain reliever in case your discomfort is important or doesn’t go away.

In the event you received a direct or local application, chances are you’ll must follow some basic aftercare. Check along with your provider on this.

Suggestions For Getting The Most Out Of Cryotherapy

Cryotherapy sessions are pretty straightforward. Nevertheless, listed below are some tricks to show you how to make essentially the most out of your sessions.

• Wear appropriate clothing. Depending on what variety of cryotherapy you perform, you’ll need different guidelines for clothing. For instance, whole-body cryotherapy generally allows loose-fitting clothing while half-body cryotherapy has you wear as little as possible aside from underwear, socks, and gloves. Remember to check before you go.
• Be as dry as possible! Don’t come to your session sweaty or wet. We mentioned this above but it surely’s price repeating. Any water in your body will freeze and may present problems.
• Don’t wear jewelry. It’s best to take off all jewelry before you go to your cryotherapy session. If metal contacts your skin, it will possibly freeze to your body and create serious cold burns.
• Don’t use any lotions or oils. The reasoning for this is analogous to why try to be totally dry. Lotion or oil can freeze and crystalize in your skin, increasing the probability of getting frostbite or serious cold burns.

5 Common Cryotherapy Mistakes To Avoid

Cryotherapy uses extreme cold, and these temperatures are literally dangerous for an individual in the event that they’re exposed for too long.

Listed here are the highest things you possibly can do to make this generally secure treatment unsafe.

1) You are not dry:

Never start a cryotherapy session wet, which incorporates being sweaty from a workout. Being wet could cause the water to freeze in your body and cause frostbite, just like should you place ice directly onto the skin.

So, stay dry! In the event you do use cryotherapy following your workout, give yourself enough time to chill down and dry off.

2) You Fall Asleep:

The duration one stays in cryotherapy may be very short, 2-5 minutes. That is as a consequence of the extremely cold temperatures used and the damage it does to your healthy skin if exposed for too long.

I am unable to imagine how you’d give you the option to go to sleep while being blasted with cold air, but heed my warning! This just isn’t the time to loosen up and drift off.

3) You Perform Cryotherapy Alone:

Again, that is one other health hazard.

Cryotherapy treatment uses extreme colds that may either put an individual in shock or cause serious injury. Subsequently, never perform cryotherapy on yourself. You need to have one other person present to assist in case of an emergency.

4) You Go For Too Long Or Too Often:

You need to take heed to the protection protocols regarding time. These safety measures are set in place to guard the body from these extreme temperatures. If ignored, temperature injuries similar to frostbite can occur.

For instance, this case study examined the events surrounding two cases of feet frostbite. Each patients had prolonged and uninterrupted application of cryotherapy for 4 to 7 days¹⁰. While each patients were eventually treated successfully without lack of limb, this might have been easily avoided.

5) You do not Use Proper Padding When Required:

Some types of cryotherapy require using a barrier to guard unexposed skin from extreme cold. For instance, when using a direct application like ice packs, the suggestion is that you simply use a sufficient amount of padding to guard your skin from direct contact.

As well as, it is also common practice for patients to wear gloves when using methods similar to partial body cryotherapy.

These extra layers are present as these areas are vulnerable to injury if unprotected. Cases of frostbite have been reported when these precautions are ignored. But I have not seen this occur anywhere wherein the right protocols were carried out.

Where Can You Do Cryotherapy?

Options for a way and where you do cryotherapy are growing on daily basis.

Listed here are a few of your options:

• At Home: Some types of cryotherapy could be performed within the comfort of your private home. This primarily consists of things similar to using ice packs and cold therapy machines.
• Fitness Centers: Many fitness centers have begun to supply cryotherapy, either directly or through a partnership with an organization. If this selection is accessible, I like to recommend confirming that the practitioner has the suitable experience and skills.
• Specialized Recovery Centers: There was a dramatic increase in specialized recovery centers. These are health facilities that concentrate on the recovery and rejuvenation of the body. They might offer services similar to IV, compression suits, and cryotherapy.
• Hospitals: You need to go to a hospital should you seek cryotherapy to treat medical conditions, similar to removing skin tags and other growths.

What To Do After A Cryotherapy Session

After your cryotherapy session, you’ll likely feel a rush of endorphins and “feel-good chemicals.” Generally, when one uses partial-body cryotherapy or whole-body cryotherapy, there’s a minimal amount of aftercare it’s essential to take.

Nevertheless, for extreme examples or people who use direct application, aftercare could also be more necessary. For those using liquid nitrogen, temperatures can reach 200 degrees below zero. That is cold enough to really cause cold burns, which can lead to the world swelling in addition to the looks of blisters.

The swelling should go down by itself, nevertheless, blisters can stick around for a number of days. In the event you experience a blister, you possibly can let it break by itself or use a sterilized needle to puncture it. This ought to be done after the blister has stopped enlarging. It’s best to then clean the world and use an antiseptic to cover the world and forestall infection.

As well as, stay well hydrated to make sure skin health. In the event you are sensitive, chances are you’ll use sunscreen to stop irritation from the sun.

FAQs

Remaining cryotherapy questions? Let’s answer them here.

What Does Cryotherapy Do To Your Body?

Exposing yourself to cold temperatures could cause several physiological reactions. This could include restricting your blood vessels, your cells producing energy at a slower rate, producing chemicals similar to norepinephrine and dopamine, and increasing your metabolism to warm the body.

Does cryotherapy show you how to drop some weight?

When your body is placed in extreme cold, it’s essential to combat these cold temperatures through the use of energy to provide heat. This heat will then warm up the inner body temperature. The evidence is mixed on this. While studies indicate a trend toward improved body composition, it is kind of small in comparison with other weight reduction methods, similar to controlling your eating regimen¹¹.

What Are The Side Effects of Cryotherapy?

Luckily, the opposed effects of cryotherapy are relatively small and benign and may include things similar to skin redness and unsightly cold sensations. More serious issues also can occur, similar to bleeding, ulcers, infection, nerve damage, and frostbite. Nevertheless, these more serious effects only occur once you begin to operate out of the suggested protocol.

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