Cryotherapy

[Gfreak]

Hey, long time no see for most of y'all.

A Cryotherapy place opened up pretty close to where I lived. And I was curious what y'all thought about the benefits of it vs traditional ice baths.

There's a couple people I know around here who swear by it (one of whom is a world level BJJ competitor) But I know that doesn't mean much haha.

http://lonestarcryotherapy.com/ That's the place, and they've got some info on the machine they use there I believe.


Just wonder y'alls thoughts on this stuff was.


edit: Also reason i'm asking is they're having a special tomorrow for their opening where it's only 10$ to try it out lol.

 

[JimRussel]

Joe Rogan raves about it.

It's $10...Just go try it for yourself.

 

[ripskater]

My brother said he did it for a while. He said he slept better at night when he did it. I don't know why. I'll try to ask him what he felt.

 

[Badger67]

Thermal therapies have their usage, and i used to be very curious about the cryotherapy aspect. But, tissue depth is a big deal with intense cold/heat. The higher/colder the temperature, the less likely it will penetrate to the deep layers (think sun burn/frost bite), you are likely only cooling peripheral. However, immediately after, or during a workout even such as this study on AVA's


It may be more useful in this time dependence as the blood is more peripheral than internal. Though deeper tissue effects will still be mild to none, most likely.

Edit: i can't get it to load as a link, but in chrome you can zoom and read full text. Very interesting study and the accidental results uncovered.

 

[ironwolf]

I use it often, 1-2 times a week. I'm lucky though, I get to do it for free because the ex phys department at the university I work for has one.

There's this guy who works there who is obsessed with recovery so they have all sorts of cool stuff to use.

I havnt been too injured in awhile but it really seems to speed up my recovery. After my car crash a few months ago, using it seemed to keep a lot of the swelling down and seemed to make the bruises and cuts heal more quickly than normal.

It also feels good to do it after my longer or harder runs.

 

[Gfreak]

Thanks for that link badger!

I Went today, and man it was better than I was expecting for sure. I was expecting something similar to an ice bath...and it has a similar effect. But shorter and it doesn't hurt like an ice bath.

i've had a semi-chronic pain in my wrist for the last few weeks from training. And I have no pain whatsoever right now. I'm not sure how well it works for the recovery aspect as I didn't train today. But it definitely helped my wrist.

 

[Boxing123]

I'm really curious about the scientific reasoning behind cryotherapy. Would it not seem more logical to use heat therapy as this woul increase the blood flow to the injured areas and thereby increasing the nutrients and recovery speed? I know that what I'm saying is broscience, but I never could find any reason as to why cryotherapy would be beneficial. Although a bunch of people who do it say it works.

 

[Boxing123]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26383887
"There is insufficient evidence to determine whether whole-body cryotherapy (WBC) reduces self-reported muscle soreness, or improves subjective recovery, after exercise compared with passive rest or no WBC in physically active young adult males. There is no evidence on the use of this intervention in females or elite athletes. The lack of evidence on adverse events is important given that the exposure to extreme temperature presents a potential hazard."

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/whole-body-cryotherapy/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3956737/
There was evidence from three studies6,8,11 that WBC does not affect markers of muscle damage after exercise. These studies found few differences between WBC and control groups in creatine kinase, lactate dehydrogenase, and aspartate aminotransferase during recovery from exercise-induced muscle damage (EIMD),11 intense running,6 or 5 days of moderate-intensity tennis training.8
Using a randomized controlled design, Costello et al10 found that 3-minute exposures at −110°C had little effect on joint positional sense and muscle function compared to control exposures at 15°C. A follow-up study within the same report10 examined the effectiveness of WBC compared to resting control using a subgroup of participants exposed to EIMD: results showed few differences between groups in terms of participants’ strength, power, and muscle soreness.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4078193/
In addition, future work could investigate the effects of repeated WBC on long term muscle adaptation. Although potentially beneficial in the short term, it is unknown if suppressing the acute inflammatory response may negatively affect the muscles ability to adapt to exercise.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25254899
There were no significant differences in peak torque, average power, total work or muscle activity between conditions.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25750548
WBC may not improve muscle-function (dependent on stretch-shortening cycle) recovery in very short periods (ie, 30 minutes) following HIE.

Just some articles on the questionable nature of cryotherapy. I couldn't find any well designed scientific studies that supported cryotherapy.

 

[ripskater]

I'm really curious about the scientific reasoning behind cryotherapy. Would it not seem more logical to use heat therapy as this woul increase the blood flow to the injured areas and thereby increasing the nutrients and recovery speed? I know that what I'm saying is broscience, but I never could find any reason as to why cryotherapy would be beneficial. Although a bunch of people who do it say it works.

If it helps, maybe it's lowering inflammation after a workout?

 

[ripskater]

Thanks for that link badger!

I Went today, and man it was better than I was expecting for sure. I was expecting something similar to an ice bath...and it has a similar effect. But shorter and it doesn't hurt like an ice bath.

i've had a semi-chronic pain in my wrist for the last few weeks from training. And I have no pain whatsoever right now. I'm not sure how well it works for the recovery aspect as I didn't train today. But it definitely helped my wrist.

When my brother did it, he was really positive about it doing that after workouts.

 

[selfcritical]

Thermal therapies have their usage, and i used to be very curious about the cryotherapy aspect. But, tissue depth is a big deal with intense cold/heat. The higher/colder the temperature, the less likely it will penetrate to the deep layers (think sun burn/frost bite), you are likely only cooling peripheral. However, immediately after, or during a workout even such as this study on AVA's


It may be more useful in this time dependence as the blood is more peripheral than internal. Though deeper tissue effects will still be mild to none, most likely.

Edit: i can't get it to load as a link, but in chrome you can zoom and read full text. Very interesting study and the accidental results uncovered.

Thanks. I had seen stories about these devices, but not much in the way of studies. These things and occlusion training are among the few things that people aren't already doing in training that could make big breakthroughs in exercise science.

 

[Badger67]

I'm not sold on occlusion training just yet, but i am interested to find out more about it.

Boxing123, if you're really interested in finding out more about how cold therapies can help, you might need to understand more about the inflammatory response. They are generally used in acute stages of inflammation. Heat is generally used, afterward to do what you have suspected. It's a neat field, because it is being remodelled lately. If i find anything of serious interest this week, i will post it. Give me some time as i have classes.

 

[hardesthitta]

Cryotherapy.... sounds like some place depressed people go to cry together to help them get better lol..

 

[Volador]

Hello, what can I say, I've been going to cryotherapy for a couple of years. The result is noticeable simply on the face. I began to feel much better both mentally and physically it's so great. As for me, it's better to go to cryotherapy than to take cold baths. But before I went for this procedure for the first time, I read a lot about whether it's useful. I accidentally stumbled upon the site adriameduae.com where it says that if you feel inadequate after the first time, it’s better not to go. I highly recommend you try to go all the more so cheap! Try it!

How do people even manage to find these 5 year old threads lol. Then treat them as if not a day had gone by and TS was still going to the same place with the same $10 offer.

 

[Fahcough]

How do people even manage to find these 5 year old threads lol. Then treat them as if not a day had gone by and TS was still going to the same place with the same $10 offer.

Mark this, in 5 years it'll be $550 a session.