Cryotherapy can help with muscle pain and assist in promoting faster healing of athletic injuries.
Post-exercise recovery
Using cryo as a post-exercise recovery is becoming more and more popular.
Studies have shown that reducing the skin temperature with cryotherapy stimulates liver metabolism and muscle reactions, resulting in better blood circulation, pain relief and inflammation reduction. This makes cryotherapy a great addition to treating sports injuries and extending the competitive life of athletes. Cryotherapy has been used to reduce the recovery time in handball-, football- , rugby- and basketball players. As well as other types of athletes such as kayakers, badminton- , squash – and table tennis players.
Positive effect
Additionally, endurance-trained runners improved their recovery time and delayed onset of muscle soreness with cryotherapy. The studies found that Whole body cryo increased the white blood cell count, which can stimulate the formation of new blood vessels. Cryotherapy can speed up recovery from high-intensity training in endurance professionals. It suggested that these improvements could be a result of cryo boosting muscle oxygenation and reducing cardiovascular strain.
Another study, involving a kayaking team, discovered that whole body cryo could extend exercise due to the great effect on the oxidant/antioxidant balance.
Whole body cryo modifies many vital biochemical and physiological parameters in human athletes, including a decrease in pro-inflammatory cytokines, adaptive changes in antioxidant status and positive effects on muscular damage. Cryotherapy can have a regular effect on important events associated with inflammation after injury – including cell metabolism, white blood cell activity and potentially apoptosis.