When the Ice Right wrap is applied to an injury, such as a strain or sprain, the combination of ice and compression rapidly cools the injured area. This effective combination not only relieves pain but also helps to prevent secondary swelling of already damaged tissue. This secondary swelling is the primary cause of extended recovery times.
Ice Right is useful for the treatment of many non-acute injuries such as shin splints, tennis elbow and other chronic or recurring injuries. Check with your doctor to see if ice and compression are an appropriate treatment for your injury before using Ice Right.
Why It Works
When you are injured your body responds by sending specific agents to the site of the injury. These agents immediately begin to repair and remove damaged tissue, which causes the secondary and excessive swelling common to sprained ankles and other similar injuries. If the injured area is allowed to swell without treatment, recovery cannot begin until the swelling has abated, a process that can take days.
When ice and compression are applied following an injury the body’s response to the injury can be controlled, and the most effective path to recovery can begin.
What Happens When You Are Injured
The body responds to sports injuries in a variety of ways that help to protect and heal the injury. And while the physiological response to the primary injury is aimed toward repairing damaged tissue, the body’s response can actually cause more damage if RICES is not applied immediately after injury.
Primary Injury Response
Damaged tissue swells and causes pain.
Additional swelling is caused by ruptured blood vessels.
Blood vessels quickly clot (in minor injuries) and swelling slows.
The mass of damaged tissue is known as a “hematoma” or what you see as a bruise or contusion.
Secondary Injury
As the hematoma swells it causes additional pain in undamaged tissue.
The body responds to the pain and damage by attempting to remove the hematoma.
Swelling from the primary injury decreases blood flow to the injured area by compressing blood vessels to the point where they can no longer transport enough oxygen to the injured area.
Healthy tissue surrounding the injured area begins to suffocate from lack of oxygen, thereby causing a secondary tissue death.
Fluid flow between cells is also restricted from swelling and more fluids will attempt to enter tissue surrounding the injury, causing these cells to burst and die.
This secondary swelling of an injury is known as an edema, and the tissue damage that accompanies this swelling is collectively known as the “secondary hypoxic injury”.
Secondary tissue death is what RICES aims to eliminate. The application of cold and compression immediately following an injury can help to reduce this secondary tissue die-off from edema.
Decreased metabolism through cold therapy is the mechanism which prevents secondary hypoxic injury. Ice Right provides the cold therapy and compression necessary to prevent secondary tissue death from swelling.
Clinical Research And Cryotherapy
Numerous clinical studies have shown that ice and compression are the preferred method of treating tissue damage. It is almost universally accepted that RICES is the best method of treating acute sports injuries. Doctors and researchers cannot explain the exact reasons, but studies have shown that ice and compression together significantly reduce recovery time for many types of sports injuries.
The bibliography at the end of this page provides a good starting place for additional research into injury treatment through cryotherapy.
For more information about Ice Right please visit the product page or contact us for more information. You can email us or call us toll-free at 1-877-626-4500. We can't wait to hear from you!
Bibliography
For Cryotherapy
Note: There exists a very large body of research that proves the effectiveness of the RICES protocol. This is a very small sample of the literature available.
Knight, Kenneth L. 1995. Cryotherapy in Sport Injury Management. Human Kinetics Publishing. Recommended reading for those interested in the hows and whys of cryotherapy.
For Shin Splints
Clanton, T.O. and Solcher, B.W. 1994. Chronic leg pain in the athlete. Clinics in Sports Medicine, 13, (4), pp. 743-759.
Gerow, G., Matthews, B., Jahn, W. and Gerow, R. 1993. Compartment syndrome and shin splints of the lower leg. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, 16, (4), pp. 245-252.
Michael RH, Holder LE: The soleus syndrome: a cause of medial tibial stress (shin splints). Am J Sports Med 1985;13(2):87-94.
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