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Tuesday, January 21, 2014

"We've Got to Stop Icing" A Year Later

Last week I posted a video from Mobility WOD talking about the need to stop icing.  Below is the video that they created following up a year later on the video and discussing some of the responses they experience and what their thoughts are now.  Along with the video are some of my thoughts and ideas about the topic.

Video:
We've Got To Stop Icing: Year Later

The concept of icing due to the slowing or shutting down of the body's natural response to injury is definitely one to consider.  A common misconception is that ice actually reduces swelling and within the medical profession I believe very few would agree with this and instead would counter with that ice can help with the prevention of further increases in swelling.  Now, in the video this would be argued that we don't want this to occur due to stopping what our body wants to do naturally.  I do believe there is a time and place for icing in that a massive amount of swelling is detrimental to healing and sometimes icing is our best option to not prevent swelling but to control swelling in hopes of not letting it get out of hand.

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I do agree with the video and it has personally changed my treatment of many injuries in that we want to use compression and especially as much as we can the active contraction of our muscle to create this compression within blood vessels and lymph channels to help our body get rid of this swelling naturally.  I think that we can also take this further in using electrical stimulation to help that natural compression of muscles and also look at major lymph channel to help direct swelling with the help of current and gravity (and go really crazy and get contraction on your own).  I also believe the correct application of manual therapy to aid in the help of moving fluid and edema towards the proper processing channels is also extremely effective.  My observations have shown the effects of Short Wave Diathermy and Class IV lasers (LightCure) have decreased healing time and sped up the return to play due to inflammation removal.

Challenge the current ideas when not only common sense back it up but also the science and the bottom line, find what works.

Mobility WOD

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