Ouch!…Now What?

by Cheska Jackson

Before we begin, please note, I am not a doctor– just a former athlete with some biological knowledge and a mom of two gymnasts who has a lot of experience with ice packs and heating pads.  In the case of any injury, you are advised to seek the attention of a registered medical practitioner. Now that we’ve taken care of that little, yet important disclaimer…

Sport and injury go hand in hand, especially when you enter the arena of high performance athletics.  There is simply no escaping it.  Gymnasts undeniably push their bodies to the limit every day; damaging, repairing and growing muscles, hyper stretching, breaking bones.  When they are done training for the day, their bodies, not surprisingly, often hurt and they have incurred small injuries. So the question is…How do you treat them?  Ice or heat?

As a general rule, and within the first 48 hours of an injury, do what moms all over the world have been prescribing for eons…”put some ice on it”.  You can never really go wrong with ice.  Just don’t put it directly on the skin because direct contact can actually damage the skin with prolonged exposure.  Thus the reason for which moms of long ago always put it in a tea towel, and we continue to do so today.

Ice is great after an injury for several reasons.  First, it has psychological impact.  It makes the injured party feel better because the activity of icing helps them to focus on more than just the pain they are experiencing and gives them a sense of control over the situation .  It also promotes calmness, as the injured person gets the reassuring sense that someone, (even if it is just themselves,)  is actually doing something to help them and attempting to minimize their pain.  It is always easier to endure pain when you know it will be alleviated and that you are not powerless in the face of it.  More importantly though, and from a purely scientific perspective, ice has several healing properties.

When an injury occurs, small blood vessels are damaged and blood leaks into the spaces between cells and tissues, which puts pressure on the nerve endings located there.  Pressure applied to the nerve endings triggers signals that are then perceived as pain by the brain.  Simple cause and effect:  If the amount of blood/pressure at the injured site increases, so does the amount of pain.  It is also important to note that when swelling occurs, it’s not only the nerves that are affected. The excess fluid puts pressure on other surrounding cells as well.  This can potentially cause further damage to tissue that was not affected by the initial injury, so it is always important to get swelling under control as soon as possible.  Bring out the ice pack!

The cold of the ice constricts the small blood vessels, limiting the amount of blood and cellular fluid that can leak into the wounded area.  This is critical to controlling  or reducing the swelling and bruising, thereby limiting the effects and extent of the injury. It also “numbs the nerves” by reducing the speed at which they send out pain signals, thereby reducing the amount of pain experienced.  As an added bonus, ice application does not take very long to be effective. Recommendations are generally to apply the ice for 15 minutes every couple of hours, or to do 10 minutes on, 10 minutes off at various times throughout the day.  In that short time with this basic treatment, you can minimize the extent of damage and the amount of pain experienced from a minor injury.  Yay ice!

So what about heat?

Heat treatment is the inverse of icing and is used after the initial 48-72 hour period following the injury to aid in recovery or to treat chronic pain.  Where icing constricts damaged blood vessels to decrease the amount of blood flow to an injury site, heat increases blood flow to the healing tissues by dilating intact blood vessels in order to aid in repair.  The increased blood flow results in increased activity by the white blood cells, greater amounts of nutrition being delivered to the injured tissues and a more rapid removal of cellular waste products which all translates into “speedier recovery”.  As with ice, you want to wrap your heat packs in a towel before applying them so that you don’t damage the skin, and once again, they are generally applied for 15 minutes every couple of hours.

So there you have it: Ice VS Heat.  Again, in the event of an injury, athletes and parents are advised to seek the attention of a medical professional. And remember, gymnasts are used to sore muscles and corporal discomfort.  They develop a higher pain tolerance for it through ongoing exposure.  If they feel that “something hurts”, or think they might have sustained an injury, it is generally worth having it checked out because it probably hurts a lot more than we think and you never want to prolong suffering or risk incurring further damage.