Icing an injury is one of the most common treatment modalities. But is icing actually beneficial?
For decades, coaches and doctors have recommended applying ice to minor injuries like sprains and strains. The method itself is straightforward, apply ice, put pressure on it, and rest. This approach to recovery has been massively popular because it doesn’t require any special equipment or expertise.
The idea got popular in 1978 with the book Sportsmedicine Book written by Dr. Gabe Mirkin. Since the book’s publication, Dr. Mirkin has actually changed his stance on ice as a helpful recovery modality. By staying up to date with new recovery research, Dr. Mirkin’s views on ice adapted and evolved. He now believes that applying ice to injured tissue causes the blood vessel to constrict and stop the blood flow necessary for healing and processing inflammation.
Ice Isn’t Good for Recovery.
Since the late ’70s, many more studies have been conducted that specifically examine cold therapy’s effect on soft tissue injury. One 2008 meta-analysis that examined multiple studies found that there isn’t enough evidence to suggest icing improves the healing of soft tissue injuries.
Studies have concluded that applying ice is based largely on anecdotal evidence or someone saying the modality works without any hard data. Anecdotal evidence is hard to counteract. People tend to believe in what they think works and have seen work, even if research evidence disproves their reasoning. Icing injuries is just one example.
Ice Harmful for Recovery?
Ice may be the safest, simplest pain relief tool we have at our disposal. When used to numb an injury, ice is beneficial. But when used for more than 5 minutes, according to Dr. Mirkin, ice can be detrimental to the body’s natural tissue repair process. Extended use of ice can also lead to reduced strength, flexibility, and endurance.
Ice is not an ideal recovery method because it has the effect of slowing your body’s natural response, which is essential to healing. It’s better to use a modality that enhances your body’s natural recovery response, like light therapy.
Light Therapy Heals Better than Ice
Healthy light intake is a key part of a healthy, balanced lifestyle. Like exercise, nutritious eating, and restful sleep, healthy light intake can greatly impact managing recovery. You can enhance cellular function and help support your body’s natural recovery process with light therapy treatments.
Inflammation & Red Light Therapy
Inflammation is a natural response to injury and an integral part of the healing process. In a healthy response to stress or injury, inflammation sets in within a few hours and works to clear the damaged tissue and start the repair process. Once the injury or strain is healed, the inflammation gradually fades away.
Ice and red light therapy have very different effects on inflammation. Ice works to suppress the body’s inflammatory response, while red light therapy supports inflammation management. Ice prevents normal inflammation from doing its job, which is to help us heal and process strain. Red light therapy can speed up the recovery process by helping the body process inflammation and oxidative stress more efficiently. Dr. Michael Hamblin of Harvard Medical School is one of the world’s leading photomedicine researchers, and he believes light therapy produces an “overall reduction in inflammation.”
Sleep is Still Key for Recovery
Dr. Mirkin may have changed his stance on ice usage for recovery, but basic rest remains a core recovery component. There’s no substitute for sleep when it comes to your body’s ability to heal itself. Red light therapy treatments are designed to enhance cellular function. They support a balanced lifestyle with healthy light in the comfort of your own home, which can positively impact the quality of your sleep.
Performance and recovery go hand in hand when training or doing physical activities, regardless if you’re an athlete or not. In fact, athletes and their trainers utilize light therapy to improve their performance and muscle health and optimize recovery. To expound further, this article will tackle optimizing performance in fitness, improving the recovery process, and breaking down the significance of light therapy.
Optimizing performance means paying attention to the body and how it functions, to live and train the body, and to find the best way to support its functions. Performance is not based on how hard or heavy are the weights you lift or the number of kilometers you’ve run; it is how effective your performance is and how you match it with your lifestyle (with the way you eat, drink and sleep).
On the other hand, recovery is about the effectiveness of the body’s healing process and the conscious effort of being in your best shape by enhancing your workout. It is also about utilizing the body’s tools and functions to effectively finish the jobs required daily.
Performance and recovery are correlated to one another. In exercising or training, if you want to improve fitness, workouts should be consistent. To get stronger, faster, and bigger, certain efforts must be made to increase performance levels. The recovery process is essential in health. It contributes to the workout; it is the downtime between training sessions or a break due to an injury or a period of healing from any exhaustion experienced.
Breaks like cool-downs, rest, and ample time of sleep give your body time to recuperate. They also allow healing for the muscles and tissues affected, strained, or damaged from workouts or training.
Performance is better when recovery time from soreness or inflammation is maximized. It also helps prevent burnout, fatigue, and possible injuries. If recovery is not made right, your physical performance may not reach its optimal state. Some athletes and trainers even make a recovery a priority over training itself. They believe that when an athlete recovers better than their competition, they will train harder in the long run.
Even if you are not an athlete, you should know how to let your body rest, heal, and recover properly from any form of injury or physical activity. Everyone has their own activity levels to maintain. It may not be sports-related, but everyone demands effort from their bodies on a day-to-day basis.
Regardless if you are an athlete, your body has limits. And if you push too hard, the body can break down and perform worse, especially if you didn’t observe any recovery time. Overtraining and pushing the body beyond its limits can affect performance in the short term or long term. Chances of injury are higher when you don’t allow yourself to recover, and it may also affect hormonal levels and the function of the immune system. The body needs time to process inflammation or any injury.
Inflammation happens when the body responses to danger or strain. It often takes place during a strenuous workout. When exercising, inflammation may indicate muscular damage. And when a muscle is “damaged,” it means that the tissue is growing and undergoes repair to get stronger.
Experiencing inflammation is a normal part of the growth and repair of muscle tissues. However, if you won’t set aside time for recovery, your inflammation may worsen over time and lead to greater health consequences.
Here are some ways that can help you improve your body’s recovery process:
The body speaks when it sends signals to the brain. Sometimes, we dismiss these signals because of training goals. This may eventually lead to fatigue and injury. When you experience pain or when your muscles are sore, it is important to give your body time to recuperate. You must also be aware of your heart rate, especially at rest, as it may be saying something about the state of your health.
Besides giving your body time to recuperate, deep sleep also allows the body to digest and process fat and recover from inflammation or damaged muscle tissues. It is harder for the body to recover from pain, strain, fatigue, and injury when you’re sleeping less than 7–8 hours per night. If you’re struggling with getting enough sleep, try doing meditation or speak with a doctor so he/she can advise you about developing a sleeping routine.
Getting the right amount of whole foods, good carbohydrates, protein, and good fat can also boost your performance and recovery. Lowering your intake of processed foods, alcohol, and sugary drinks can also help decrease inflammation.
The performance and recovery of our bodies depend entirely on our cells. When our cells are creating and using energy efficiently, our bodies recover faster. ATP (adenosine triphosphate) energy is released to give us power in what we do. The process of creating ATP energy works best when our body and cells are well-balanced, reaching a state called homeostasis.
High-quality devices are now available in the market to help athletes and trainers enhance the body’s natural healing and recovery process through light therapy.
Light therapy is a non-invasive treatment that uses LED lights to deliver red and near-infrared light to the skin and cells. It promotes efficient cellular ATP energy production and helps restore the balance of cells and tissues. Light therapy can be done before or after a workout. Some even do it both times — before and after a workout, depending on their goals.
Pre-conditioning with light therapy before working out can also help strengthen muscle performance. It can limit muscle damage and strain, lessening the chances of inflammation or soreness. When used after a workout, it promotes the speedy recovery of muscles and accelerates its adaptability to exercise. It also helps the body process acute inflammation after physical activity.
Muscles are composed of millions of cells that need to release ATP energy to fulfill the body's jobs, balancing exercise and stress. Light therapy helps improve cellular ATP energy, glycogen synthesis, oxidative stress reduction, and protection against muscle damage from exercising. Light therapy also helps improve blood circulation and oxygen availability, which allows better healing and recovery. It helps with the overall improvement of physical performance and faster recovery times. It also helps limit fatigue from exercising and strength training.
As discussed, light therapy promotes faster healing and recovery and soothes cells under stress when doing strenuous workouts, incurring injuries, and experiencing inflammation. When you set aside time for recovery, you give your body and cells what they need to function, thus improving your overall performance.
At Kaiyan Medical, we offer high-quality light therapy devices to help you achieve and maintain your fitness and performance goals. If you have questions about our products and the brands we offer, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We will respond to you as soon as possible.
Athletes take exercise and training very seriously to maximize and improve performance. Whether you’re a competitive elite athlete or someone who’s just born to win every day, recovery can be one of the most neglected aspects of our daily lives.
Recovery: We hear it all the time from coaches and instructors, but it’s also one of the hardest things to do. The saying “Push yourself to your limits” happens also to have its own limits. Neglecting your training recovery aspect for optimal performance can take a toll on our body in the long run.
In this article, we show the importance of rest and recovery and some of the ways to speed up our body’s healing process, such as integrating red light therapy treatment.
After training or a strenuous workout, our body responds to strain, injury, or stress as a defense mechanism in inflammation. While it may sound damaging, inflammation is a natural response when our muscle tissue regenerates and grows from microtears. Going through the process is important to allow muscle growth and performance improvement. However, the inflammation needs recovery for your muscles to heal from too much strain or injury for it to maximize its healing effects.
Recovery is the process that your body undergoes to recuperate between training sessions or from the time of danger to its healing progression. Recovery works by giving your body time to regenerate muscle tissues.
Whether it’s a strain, acute soreness, or severe damage, your body needs time to heal. The time needed for the recovery process is also dependent on the severity of the damage/strain/injury. This means that the greater the stressor's intensity to your body, the longer the time you need to spend to allow your body to recover.
Many athletes have made recovery time a priority as it assists in the healing process of muscles post-inflammation. Giving your body time to recover can result in an improved performance.
During the recovery time, the muscle repairs regenerate and strengthens to tolerate a higher level of strain the next time. In other words, taking time to heal makes you stronger and less susceptible to future injuries. Having enough recovery time helps in optimal performance and longevity by helping the athletes convalesce both psychologically and physically to train and perform better.
By doing this, you can prevent future chronic problems, decreased sports performance, increased risk of injuries, or fatigue caused by inadequate healing.
1. Plan Your Rest Time
Planning your rest schedule and duration involves many factors such as the intensity of your activity, your age, and your skill level in sports/pieces of training. You may need less time to recover or more, depending on your personal needs. As a general rule, for medium to intense workouts/training, it is prescribed to maintain a healthy duration of 45 hours in between training.
Pro tip: Engage in Active Recovery
If you’re not suffering from an injury or severe damage, it’s important to incorporate active recovery periods during your recovery time so your body can maintain its active state.
Proper blood circulation is important in the recovery process. When the body gets injured, the body responds by dilating blood cells to speed up blood flow. Active recovery helps maintain good blood circulation and removes lactic acid out of inflamed muscles. Active recovery activities involve light physical movements such as stretching or yoga to allow proper blood flow and help your muscles recover and adapt better.
2. Get Enough Sleep
The Human Growth Hormone (HGH) is at its peak at night as we sleep. This hormone is responsible for tissue repair and recovery. This is why the key to a speedy recovery is to make you get a good REM sleep at the right time during your recovery period. Make sure to get a minimum of 7 hours of sleep at night to ensure that your body gets enough rest that it needs and to avoid any future complications. Lack of sleep can deter the process of muscle recovery.
Pro tip: Don’t be scared of having a few extra hours
Especially when you are suffering from intense strain/injury, it’s important to sneak in a few extra hours of sleep within your recovery period. In fact, a 2018 study suggests that sleep extension, a form of sleep intervention, can significantly contribute to the success of an athlete’s recovery. One way to ensure you get a significant amount of rest is to make sure your body has a healthy circadian rhythm. If you’re worried that you’re having trouble sleeping at night, there are many ways to improve your circadian clock- including red light therapy.
3. Refuel your Body
A healthy diet is also one of the great pillars of health. The nutrients you take in play a great role in your body’s function to cooperate with the recovery process. Minimize processed foods that may contain too much salt, sweets, and alcohol. These types of food may promote inflammation and dehydration, which can hinder the recovery process. Make sure to eat a balance recommended diet of whole foods.
Have an evaluation with a licensed dietitian or nutritionist to assess your nutritional needs. Assessment may vary depending on different factors such as weight, BMI, and activity level.
Pro tip: Focus on your Protein Intake
Protein is the key macronutrient that is responsible for muscle building and repair. It has amino acids that are metabolized by your body to ease muscle inflammation and build stronger muscles. Skip gulping on those protein supplements and focus instead on taking protein from whole foods such as lean meat, eggs, and cheese.
4. Listen to your Body
There can be all kinds of rules in recovery to maximize healing, but you can’t go wrong with paying attention to your body’s signals. Often, your body’s responses can be neglected. However, overlooking these signals can result in overtraining, which puts your body at risk of having more problems in the long run.
Despite your recovery time or period, if your body signals indicate pain and soreness, it’s important to give it time to recover better to address the issue. Aside from obvious physiological signs, pay attention to your heart rate variability, indicating your body’s adaptability to stress and your overall cardiovascular fitness.
5. Incorporate Red Light Therapy
Thanks to innovative medical devices, athletes and trainers have utilized more advanced healing modalities like red light therapy. Red Light Therapy is a popular, non-invasive, and effective light therapy treatment that can improve blood circulation essential for tissue and muscle recovery. It works by using LED to deliver wavelengths that deeply penetrates the skin and cells.
Integrating red light therapy in your recovery process can speed up muscle repair and minimize pain and swelling. The therapy accelerates the healing process by enhancing macrophage activity responsible for the white blood cell’s healing and anti-inflammatory response.
Pro tip: Try using Light Therapy Body Pad
Kaiyan Medical’s Light Therapy Body pad utilizes a high-end, medical-grade dual optical energy pad that uses 30 pieces of red light and 30 pieces of infrared light. The therapy's duality promotes deep treatment by treating injured skin surface while repairing deeper muscle, bones, tissue, and joint damage. The therapy pad is specially made with a broader light spectrum to increase absorption and penetration so you can maximize the treatment’s benefits. It’s a safe, non-invasive treatment that you can add to your recovery process so you can get back in the game stronger than ever.
Recovery and Rest are just as important as optimizing and improving performance. Allowing your body to maximize its natural healing processes can improve performance and overall better physical and mental health.
Ratamess NA, Alvar BA, Kibler WB, Kraemer WJ, Triplett NT. American College of Sports Medicine position stand. Progression models in resistance training for healthy adults. Med Sci Sports Exerc 2009.
Garber CE, Blissmer B, Deschenes MR et al. American College of Sports Medicine position stand. Quantity and quality of exercise for developing and maintaining cardiorespiratory, musculoskeletal, and neuromotor fitness in apparently healthy adults: guidance for prescribing exercise. Med Sci Sports Exerc 2011.
Michael Kellmann, Maurizio Bertollo, et al. Recovery and Performance in Sport: Consensus Statement. Int J Sports Physiol Perform. 2018 Feb 1.
So-Ichiro Fukada, Takayuki Akimoto, Athanasia Sotiropoulos. Role of damage and management in muscle hypertrophy: Different muscle stem cells' behaviors in regeneration and hypertrophy. Biochim Biophys Acta Mol Cell Res. 2020 Sep.
Daniel J Plews, Paul B Laursen, et al. Training adaptation and heart rate variability in elite endurance athletes: opening the door to effective monitoring. Sports Med. 2013 Sep.
Michael R. Irwin, Richard Olmstead, Judith E. Carroll. Sleep Disturbance, Sleep Duration, and Inflammation: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Cohort Studies and Experimental Sleep Deprivation. Biol Psychiatry. 2016 Jul 1; 80(1): 40–52.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/247927
https://www.webmd.com/men/features/benefits-protein#1
The control of fire by early humans was a turning point in the technological evolution of human beings. Fire provided a source of warmth, protection from predators, a way to create more advanced hunting tools, and a method for cooking food. These cultural advances allowed human geographic dispersal, cultural innovations, and changes to diet and behavior. Additionally, creating fire allowed human activity to continue into the evening's dark and colder hours.
Claims for the earliest definitive evidence of fire control by a member of Homo range from 1.7 to 2.0 million years ago. Evidence for the “microscopic traces of wood ash” as the controlled use of fire by Homo erectus, beginning some 1,000,000 years ago, has wide scholarly support. Flint blades burned in fires roughly 300,000 years ago were found near fossils of early but not entirely modern Homo sapiens in Morocco.
The fire was used regularly and systematically by early modern humans to heat treat silcrete stone to increase its flake-ability for toolmaking approximately 164,000 years ago at the South African site of Pinnacle Point.[5] Evidence of widespread control of fire by anatomically modern humans dates to approximately 125,000 years ago.They also used fire for light.
The burning of wood (or other organic materials) releases energy in the form of infrared light. When you take a photo of someone with an infrared camera, what do you see? A heat “signature” that correlates (approximately) to their metabolic activity.
What is infrared light? It is a spectrum of light that we can’t see but that powerfully shapes our biology. You sense infrared light as “heat.” The heat you feel from the sun — that’s the sensation of infrared light. The feeling of heat you get when you put your hand close to an oven, toaster, or fire — that is also infrared light. The heat of another person’s body — infrared light again. Hot springs transfer heat to your body in the form of infrared light stored in the water itself. When you take a hot shower or hot bath, the same principle is at work.
Infrared light has been used for decades as a heat source for saunas. Before IR saunas, we had sweat lodges and traditional stone saunas. In traditional saunas and sweat lodges, stones absorb energy from either an electronic heating unit (in the case of a sauna) or a fire. The light is stored in the stones and gradually released during the sweat lodge or the sauna. Both methods use light to heal the human body.
And infrared light doesn’t just transfer “heat” to your body — it turns the water in your cells into batteries. This is likely why ancient cultures recognize the importance of fire, sweat lodges, and saunas, especially in winter.
It is not a coincidence that sitting down next to a fire is so comfortable. Firelight is natural and helps to manage melatonin production as well as keeping our circadian rhythms under control.
A fireplace or fire-pit isn’t just an ornamental detail of your home, and it’s a tool you can use to live a healthier life.
When it comes to pain, we could hardly avert it! Especially the muscle pain. Given that the human body has over 600 muscles, it is tough to avoid muscle pain. Evidently, one out of three Americans is affected by muscle pain annually.
Not only this, Musculoskeletal pain affects around 116 million Americans, which results in poor productivity, missed work or school, fatigue, and lost interest in work.
But doesn’t we treatments for this chronic pain? Of course, we do have several options. Currently, therapies available consist of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, steroid injections, pain medications, and surgery. Each of these has its own specific risk profiles.
What we need now is an effective solution that is less time-consuming, low risk, safe and non-invasive, and yet cost-effective. All these features are available in treatment; we call Low Laser Light Therapy (LLLT). Light therapy has been in the medical field over the past forty years. Light therapy has been demonstrated to lessen inflammation and edema, promote healing in a range of musculoskeletal pathologies. LLLT is being accepted around the globe. This is an advanced, cost-effective, non-invasive therapy for pain that could elevate the quality of life while reducing your financial strains. The causes of muscular pain are numerous. Hence, LLLT helps people from all fields like sports, fitness, medical, and even old age.
In this process, light with a wavelength in the red to the near-infrared region of the spectrum (660nm–905nm) is employed on the skin surface. The reason for using these wavelengths is that they have the ability to penetrate the skin and soft/hard tissues. From various conducted clinical trials, this treatment is proven to have a good effect on pain, inflammation, and repairing of the tissues. The therapy goes from 30 to 120 seconds or more a week, depending upon the pain's severity.
Based on the tissue condition, the therapy can go on for weeks or months. LLLT has resulted in relief and reduction of inflammation, pain relief, and accelerated tissue regeneration.
But how does the light actually work?
Do you know that many acute orthopedic conditions such as strains, sprains, muscular back pain, frozen shoulder, neck and back pain, etc., are amenable to Low Laser Light Therapy (LLLT)?
The Infra-Red light relieves pain in a different section of the body and increases relaxation sensation while also comforting the muscles. LLLT has been shown to enhance the multiplication of cells like fibroblasts, keratinocytes, endothelial cells, and lymphocytes. Fibroblasts and keratinocytes are two major cell types that respond to the inflammatory phase in the repair/regeneration process.
LLLT can enhance neovascularization, promote angiogenesis, and increase collagen synthesis to succor in the healing of acute and chronic wounds. The LED light sessions have shown the ability to heal skin, nerves, tendons, cartilage, and bones. Low-intensity LLLT stimulates mitochondria and also enhances the mitochondrial membrane potential.
The peripheral nerve endings of nociceptors (also known as the pain receptors), consisting of the thinly myelinated and unmyelinated, slow-conducting C fibers, lie within the epidermis. This complex network converts harmful stimuli into action potentials. Moreover, these nerve endings lie on the surface or superficial in nature, making the LLLT wavelength penetration work easy.
Hence, with the rise of chronic pain in different countries, it is imperative to validate cost-effective and safe techniques for managing painful conditions, allowing people to live active and productive lives. Light therapy is constantly evolving in relieving muscular pain. It improves the muscle's endurance, reduces muscle soreness, joint pain, and inflammation.
It’s time to let go of the pain!!
Experience the difference with light therapy from Kaiyan Medical.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12605431/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27472858/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4743666/
