Recovery is a huge topic when it comes to training. While there’s still some debate as to whether or not passive recovery strategies are necessary or even beneficial, cryotherapy clinics are popping up all over the United States and don’t appear to be going anywhere.

Ice has been widely used since the 1960s for recovery from training and injury. But, to be completely honest, no one really ever bothered to do any studies on the efficacy of ice until incredibly recently. And those studies haven’t been incredibly promising.

Today we’re going to dive into the science of recovery, how ice works on the body, and whether or not cryotherapy is the best tool in your toolbox for recovery.

Ice for Recovery

Before we get into cryotherapy, we’re going to go over a brief history of the use of ice in recovery. Since ice paved the way for cryotherapy, this seems like a good place to start.

Ice was first used medically in the 1960s when a 12-year-old boy successfully had a limb reattached after ice was used to preserve that limb in transport. News spread and ice started to be used more often on acute injuries.

Ice quickly became a favorite for athletic trainers when it came to their athletes. It was abundant, it was cheap and abundant, and it took the pain away from acute injuries with their athletes, so it seemed like a big win. The only issue was that they never actually looked into whether or not ice worked. It would be decades until peer-reviewed research concerning the use of ice was produced, and that literature hasn’t been favorable.

Later on, in 1978, Dr. Gabe Mirkin wrote a book called The Sportsmedicine Book, where he introduced the world to the RICE Method. RICE stands for Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. The thought process behind this method was to reduce inflammation in the injured area while also protecting the area, and allowing for lymphatic draining from the injured area.

• Rest

  • Rest is used to protect the injured structures by keeping them from moving. The thought is that movement can stop the injured structure from healing.

• Ice

  • Ice is used to decrease pain, while also slowing down local metabolism which can reduce the inflammatory process.

• Compression

  • Compression is used to squeeze out all of the inflammatory byproducts and/or keep them from pooling in the injured area.

• Elevation

  • Elevation is used to allow gravity to create lymphatic drainage. Typically movement would accomplish this, but the RICE method looked to rest the injured area.

This method has been used and taught in the medical field ever since. In fact, I learned this in the USF ATEP program as recently as 2011, so it was in practice for at least 30-plus years. More recently though, Dr. Mirkin has come out and retracted his endorsement of the RICE Method because it is now believed that it slows down recovery, as opposed to speeding it up. More on that later.

How Ice Works for Injuries

Ice is used for injuries for a few reasons:

• Ice reduces inflammation.

• Ice reduces swelling by constricting blood vessels, which reduces the amount of blood flow into the affected area.

• Ice reduces pain by numbing the area. It accomplishes this by reducing the efficacy of the nerves in the area being able to communicate that pain to the brain. The pain is still there, your brain just doesn’t know it.

These all seem like a good thing, but when it comes to the actual recovery process, ice is now contraindicated. We’ll talk more about that later though.

Ice creates heat exchange with the body. Our body temperature is typically 97-98 degrees, and ice holds a temperature of roughly 32 degrees. If you’ve ever used ice before, then you’ve probably realized that after a little while, the ice starts to melt. This is because ice pulls heat from your body, which brings down that tissue’s temperature. This process usually takes about 20 minutes.

You can actually check this for yourself by touching your skin following the use of ice. Believe it or not, the ice isn’t transferring cold to your skin, it’s pulling heat from your body, so your body is really warming up the ice. Just a fun little physics tidbit.

Cryotherapy Chambers: How Do They Work?

Cryo chambers work pretty much the same way that ice does. The cold air creates heat exchange with your body, dropping the temperature of the tissue (which in this case is pretty much your whole body). Same thought process as ice, just a different medium.

One of the biggest benefits of cryo chambers is that the air gets to a bone-chilling -160 to -230 degrees. That means that heat transfer will happen substantially faster than with ice, which holds a temperature of roughly 32 degrees. This means that you can get the benefits of a 15-minute ice bath in 2-4 minutes.

Some of the purported benefits of Cryotherapy Chambers:

• Pain relief

• Improved athletic performance

• Reduced muscle soreness

• Improved mood/stress relief

• Improved sleep

• Improved healing

• Prevention of Dementia and Alzheimer’s

I’m usually pretty skeptical of recovery modalities, but I get a lot more skeptical when they tout being able to prevent or cure any diseases like dementia, for example. The layout of benefits here seems much like when the pro-THC lobby says that marijuana cures cancer. Like an overplaying of their hand to try to sell you on the product.

In the next section, we’re going to debunk most of these claims.

Do Cryotherapy Chambers Actually Work?

The short answer here is not really. While there are some benefits to cryo chambers, like an increase in heat shock proteins, the costs outweigh the benefits here.

Pain Relief

Cryotherapy chambers can actually help relieve pain. This is 100% true. Cold temperatures can decrease the overall efficacy of the sensory nerves in the injured area leading to numbness. It is a short-lived pain relief, but it’s pain relief nevertheless.

Improved Athletic Performance

This is an incredibly broad statement that could realistically mean just about anything. However, there is no direct link or mechanism to be able to make this claim. In fact, there is data to suggest it decreases athletic performance.

Reduced Muscle Soreness

This can be a true statement in some respects. Cold temperature therapy does relieve pain. Cold therapy also can help to release what are called heat shock proteins (HSP). However, humans only need a temperature of 59 degrees Fahrenheit for roughly 60 minutes to induce an HSP response.

Improved Mood/Stress Relief

This is another claim that doesn’t really mean anything because it’s incredibly subjective. As someone who has used a cryo chamber and ice baths throughout my athletic career, I can tell you that they can create a short-term euphoric effect. But, like anything else that can create this kind of effect, when you come down you’ll still have to tackle whatever is causing your high stress.

Improved Sleep

While it’s true that cooler temperatures are better for inducing sleep, there aren’t a whole lot of studies that have been done with cryo chambers and sleep improvement. Cryotherapy can create an endorphin release which can increase mood and make it easier to sleep, but the cryo chamber itself isn’t necessarily going to help you sleep better.

Improved Healing

This one is unequivocally false. While there is some evidence that cryotherapy can possibly induce an HSP response, every other aspect of cold temperature therapy stops the recovery process. This claim is not only untrue; it is the polar opposite of the reality of cold temperature therapy.

Prevention of Alzheimer’s and Dementia

This one is a bit misleading. Some preliminary studies have found some promising things with whole-body cryotherapy, but it’s mostly theory at this point. The claim is that cold therapy can help fight inflammation and oxidative stress associated with these two diseases, but there are better ways to accomplish this in my opinion.

One More Reason to Be Skeptical of Cryotherapy

When I was back in school at the University of South Florida, we had an entire course on therapeutic modalities. We spent two full weeks on ice and cryotherapy. My professor encouraged us to come to our own conclusions but was pretty adamant that the heat exchange didn’t occur deep enough to actually get to the affected tissue.

The deeper you go into your body, the warmer it gets. Your body’s core temperature is typically 4-6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than your skin temperature. This means if it takes 20 minutes to get your skin temperature down with ice, it will take even longer to get to the affected tissue that’s deep within the joint.

There’s some evidence that cold therapies, whether they’re ice, an ice bath, or a cryo chamber, don’t ever penetrate deep enough to create any real physiological change. In addition to that, if you’re overweight or have more fat on your body, it will take even longer to penetrate deep enough.

So, in addition to not really working and contraindicated for recovery, the cold might not even penetrate deep enough to create any physiological changes.

Avoid Cold Therapy for Recovery

I won’t get into it super deep in this article, but inflammation is necessary for recovery. The inflammatory process is the first step of the recovery process, and stopping it with ice actually stops your recovery. I won’t go over it here, but you can read more about the inflammatory response here if you’re interested.

Cryotherapy chambers are popular because of the claims that they make, and honestly, they’re kinda cool. They look neat, they’re freezing, there’s a bunch of science involved, and it’s different. All of those things tend to add up to “it must work” in the heads of your average athlete or gym rat. However, if the goal is recovery, then look elsewhere. Your recovery will be better, and your wallet will thank you as well.