The Ultimate Guide to Heat and Ice Treatment
Minor injuries can cause a fair amount of pain but are rarely serious enough to need specialist medical care. This guide will go through the benefits of Heat and Ice treatment and how to treat injuries effectively with this technique, so that you can recover from the injury quickly and effectively.
Heat and Ice treatment is often used to alleviate a number of different pains, mostly muscle and joint pains. Ice treatment is used to relieve pain and swelling in bruises, muscle strains and sprains to aid with a speedy recovery from minor injuries. Ice treatment can help reduce the amount of internal bleeding into nearby tissues to the damaged area. This combined with the numbing effect that ice has on the surrounding area makes it easier to control the pain that the patient is suffering from.
Ice Treatment
Ice packs can be created by placing ice cubes inside a plastic bag or wrapping them inside a wet tea towel before placing the ice pack on the skin. Frozen bags of vegetables such as peas can be used too. These are ideal for use as they will mould around the area of the body that they are applied to. You can also purchase specially designed cold packs from pharmacies. It is important to always take care when applying ice from a deep freeze directly as they can cause burns if not used correctly, always read the instructions.
To use an ice pack, follow these steps;
1.Place a cold wet flannel or ice pack on the affected area. Try to wrap a towel around for comfort
2. Check the skin under the ice pack every five minutes, if the skin is bright pink or red then remove the ice pack, if not, leave on for 10 minutes
3. Ice Packs can be left on for 10 minutes on and 10 minutes off, unless applied over a bone in which case the time should be reduced, after that there will be little extra benefit from leaving it on for longer and could risk damaging the skin.
4. This can be repeated every 2-3 hours whilst you are awake for the next 24-48 hours
Heat Treatment
Heat treatment can help with muscle pains and spasms and can help soothe aches and pains. Heat should not be applied to new injuries as it can cause the blood vessels to dilate and this can lead to more bleeding. If heat is applied to skin it should only be warm, not hot as too much heat can lead to burns and skin damage. Heat can be applied using hot water bottles, deep heat spray or cream, heat pads or heat lamps. As with Ice packs, heat can only be applied to an area for 20 minutes as past this will increase bleeding which will make the situation worse. The skin must also be checked regularly to ensure that there is no further damage being caused.
With this guide you should now be ready to use Heat and Ice treatments to treat minor injuries and pains effectively and aid with the recovery from these injuries. These simple yet effective remedies can be applied by anyone and can make a great deal of difference to how well and how quickly an injury heals.
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