Cryotherapy

Cryotherapy, sometimes known as cold therapy, is the local or general use of low temperatures in medical therapy. Cryotherapy may be used to treat a variety of tissue lesions. The most prominent use of the term refers to the surgical treatment, specifically known as cryosurgery or cryoablation. Cryosurgery is the application of extremely low temperatures to destroy abnormal or diseased tissue and is used most commonly to treat skin conditions.

Cryotherapy is used in an effort to relieve muscle pain, sprains and swelling after soft tissue damage or surgery. When a musculoskeletal injury occurs, the body sends signals to our inflammatory cells, macrophages, which release IGF-1. IGF-1 is a hormone-insulin-like growth factor which initiates the termination of damaged tissue. In some cases, this inflammatory response can be aggravated and cause increased swelling and edema, which can actually prolong the recovery process. For decades, it has been commonly used to accelerate recovery in athletes after exercise. Cryotherapy decreases the temperature of tissue surfaces to minimize hypoxic cell death, edema accumulation, and muscle spasms. Minimising each or all of these ultimately alleviates discomfort and inflammation. It can involve a range of treatments, from the application of ice packs or immersion in ice baths (generally known as cold therapy), to the use of cold chambers.

Cryotherapy chamber

There are two types of cryochamber which differ in their mechanisms of action and their use. Partial-body cryotherapy makes use of liquid nitrogen to lower the temperature. The chamber used is an individual, tube-shaped enclosure that covers a person's body, but it has an open top to keep the head at room temperature.

In contrast, the temperature of a whole body cryotherapy chamber is reduced electrically, and the user fully enters it, head included.

Cryotherapy is a specific type of low-temperature treatment used to reduce inflammation and its associated pain.

Cryotherapy was developed in the 1970s by Japanese rheumatologist Toshima Yamaguchi and introduced to Europe, US and Australia in the 1980s and 1990s. Both types of cryochamber decrease the skin temperature, but lower temperatures are achieved with whole-body cryotherapy than with partial-body cryotherapy, and might be considered more effective.