Why does icing your knee help

As a general rule, ice is best for acute pain, inflammation and swelling. Heat perpetuates the cycle of inflammation and can be harmful.

Our goal is to help our patients return to an active, healthy lifestyle by reducing or eliminating pain using innovative, effective techniques with little-to-no downtime. Considering surgery for your knee pain? Contact us today for an appointment to review your options first! Terrible knee pain at times which I have been told is coming from my hip which needs to have hip surgery! I am elderly and very active for my age. Most of the knee pain is severe when I get up from sitting and also appears to go out occasionally, but helps when I grab the knee!

Did you get everything tooken care of. I was wandering if u where having pain in your knee due to walking different becuase of your hip. Hope all goes well. Love and prayers for u and family. God bless. Go Premium. Need Help? Learn More Customer Login. By Nikki Chavanelle. Don't: Ice Before You Run 1 of 7.

Find: Your Next Race. Don't: Leave It on Too Long 3 of 7. Do: Leave It on for Long Enough 4 of 7. Do: Continue Icing During the Day 6 of 7. Back to Beginning. As a former intramural rock star at SMU and current sports junkie, Nikki claims she peaked in college.

Follow Nikki on Twitter for fitness and sports chatter. Share this article. Keep reading to learn all the tricks and tips for how to ice your knee effectively. Whenever you feel a twinge in your knee, you can help yourself out by slipping some ice on your knee. Not icing your knee properly can cause damage instead of healing your body. First and foremost, you need some kind of a barrier between the ice pack and your knee.

Do not put ice directly on your skin. If you have pants on, the material from your pants will form enough of a barrier to protect your skin. You can sustain an ice burn if you apply ice directly to your skin. Know how long to leave ice pack on knee injuries. The right amount of time can lead to knee pain relief. Ice burns look and behave like other burns.

You can compare an ice burn most to sunburn since it is usually superficial and changes skin color. The affected skin will most likely turn the skin colors. Certainly, ice by itself will make your skin turn red. An ice burn, however, will look different.

An ice burn will turn the skin bright red, white, or even yellowish-gray. You may also notice a change in feeling if you sustain an ice burn.

Your skin may feel numb, itchy, or tingly. If you have a deeper, more extreme burn, you will feel pain, and your skin may even blister.

At its worst, the skin will feel unusually firm or waxy. To avoid an ice burn, put a barrier between the ice and your skin. Never put the ice directly on the skin. An ice bath is different than directly applying ice packs to your skin. With an ice bath, you fill a tub with a combination of ice and water. Athletes typically use ice baths as a way of preventing injuries. After a particularly challenging workout, an athlete might soak himself from the waist down in an ice bath. Ice baths do not have the same risk as ice packs do directly on the skin.

However, ice baths are typically therapeutic in a preventative sense. They prevent injuries. Some even question if they effectively reduce inflammation. Still, athletes claim they feel better and recover more quickly from a workout when they sit in an ice bath for fifteen minutes or after the workout.

Thus anecdotal evidence says that an ice bath may help reduce inflammation. Icing is the most natural way to care for a hurt knee. In conjunction with the right type of therapy, ice can reduce the swelling and inflammation in your knee. You need to do more than ice your knee when you injure it, though. Most doctors, trainers, and physical therapists refer to the R. R stands for rest. This means that you do as little as possible with your knee.

You rest it by taking time away from your sport or the activity that caused the injury in the first place. The I stands for ice. This refers to the ice therapy we've been talking about with the ice pack protected by a barrier and then placed on your knee for short periods. C stands for compression. The inflammation and swelling will go down with the combination of ice on the joint and then some compression material squeezing the joint.

You should consider putting a compression sleeve on your knee as you ice it. E stands for elevation. As you need to keep your injured knee elevated if you want to see the swelling go down and want to see your knee feel better more quickly.

The newest methods of therapy have added some letters to the R. They call it P. This applies to sprains, tendonitis, back pain, and any type of contusion or bruise. So while you still need to ice, compress, and elevate, the newer methods of therapy encourage the injured party to not over rest the joint. The muscles could shrink and grow weak, making recovery take that much longer.

Instead, physicians are now saying a person should protect the injured knee. Protection means you could use a knee brace that keeps the knee joint in check. Optimum loading refers to strength training.