What’s the Deal with this Cryotherapy Stuff?
As a physical therapy student, I’m taught a lot about “evidence-based practice”. This means, the things that we do to treat someone’s body should have research supporting their use and success.
I know that the general public is not always as capable of doing their own research about new trends (I foresee a post in the future about how to do your own research!), so that’s the general idea behind this post.
I recently saw a girl on my facebook feed check-in at a cryotherapy facility and rave about its effects.
It really got me thinking about what we do on a daily basis that we have no idea about the benefits or harms of doing!
I had an open mind as I looked into the research about this therapy, but also was thinking that temperatures as low as they expose the human skin to can not be good for it.
Here’s what I found:
The general gist: cryotherapy facilities have people step into a specialized chamber for 2-4 minutes and have their body exposed to extremely cold (below -100 degrees celsius) air, with the promise of improving muscle soreness and recovery after strenuous exercise.
Have you done your research? Does Cryotherapy help your body heal? Is it damaging to the body at all?
Have these centers been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration? (The answer here is nope...whomp).
A 2015 review of the literature (highest level of evidence out there) determined that there is insufficient evidence in men and no evidence in women or elite athletes to support improved muscular soreness or recovery after strenuous exercise.
Needless to say, more research is needed on this topic.
On the flip side, however, there have been many adverse health outcomes related to whole body cryotherapy; think death (a man found dead in the chamber from using the chamber after-hours at the center), short-term amnesia, abdominal aorta dissection (AKA one of the quickest-acting and most deadly medical conditions known), as well as some skin reactions.
While most of these accounts are taken from case reports (1 person and their personal response) and the evidence level is fairly low with those types of studies, you really should be aware that bad things are occurring (even if rarely) in these chambers.
Another study (more highly regarded than a case report) showed that there was no effect on professional soccer players after an intense sprint workout, except for in a single cryotherapy session when the treatment was performed within 20 minutes of the workout (and even then, it elevated testosterone levels for 24 hours only and effected nothing else).
In looking at heavy-load resistance training, one study showed that there was some evidence to support cryotherapy over cold water immersion for recovery after resistance training, but neither of those treatments was more effective than the placebo treatment (read: doing nothing at all) for accelerating recovery.
There has been some valid evidence to support cryotherapy’s use on people with fibromyalgia. That study reported that the treatment of 10 sessions over 8 days improved health related quality of life by relieving muscle pain and fatigue, and that the effects lasted at least 1 month after the intervention.
Even so, the article only recommends using this treatment as an adjunct to normal fibromyalgia treatment, not on its own.
But that’s a promising article for people with fibromyalgia who generally have a lot of pain and discomfort!
There are so many more articles out there on this topic, so I implore you to go out and do your own research, not only about Cryotherapy, but about any new fad that is emerging.
Don't get sucked in to the newest "cool" thing without investigating first! (Did you see what I did there? "cool" thing. Sometimes I'm such a nerd.)
Was this article surprising or helpful to you? What’s your reaction to reading about these studies? I’d love to hear feedback or reactions in the comments!
Articles mentioned in the blog:
I know that the general public is not always as capable of doing their own research about new trends (I foresee a post in the future about how to do your own research!), so that’s the general idea behind this post.
I recently saw a girl on my facebook feed check-in at a cryotherapy facility and rave about its effects.
It really got me thinking about what we do on a daily basis that we have no idea about the benefits or harms of doing!
I had an open mind as I looked into the research about this therapy, but also was thinking that temperatures as low as they expose the human skin to can not be good for it.
Here’s what I found:
The general gist: cryotherapy facilities have people step into a specialized chamber for 2-4 minutes and have their body exposed to extremely cold (below -100 degrees celsius) air, with the promise of improving muscle soreness and recovery after strenuous exercise.
Have you done your research? Does Cryotherapy help your body heal? Is it damaging to the body at all?
Have these centers been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration? (The answer here is nope...whomp).
A 2015 review of the literature (highest level of evidence out there) determined that there is insufficient evidence in men and no evidence in women or elite athletes to support improved muscular soreness or recovery after strenuous exercise.
Needless to say, more research is needed on this topic.
On the flip side, however, there have been many adverse health outcomes related to whole body cryotherapy; think death (a man found dead in the chamber from using the chamber after-hours at the center), short-term amnesia, abdominal aorta dissection (AKA one of the quickest-acting and most deadly medical conditions known), as well as some skin reactions.
While most of these accounts are taken from case reports (1 person and their personal response) and the evidence level is fairly low with those types of studies, you really should be aware that bad things are occurring (even if rarely) in these chambers.
Another study (more highly regarded than a case report) showed that there was no effect on professional soccer players after an intense sprint workout, except for in a single cryotherapy session when the treatment was performed within 20 minutes of the workout (and even then, it elevated testosterone levels for 24 hours only and effected nothing else).
In looking at heavy-load resistance training, one study showed that there was some evidence to support cryotherapy over cold water immersion for recovery after resistance training, but neither of those treatments was more effective than the placebo treatment (read: doing nothing at all) for accelerating recovery.
There has been some valid evidence to support cryotherapy’s use on people with fibromyalgia. That study reported that the treatment of 10 sessions over 8 days improved health related quality of life by relieving muscle pain and fatigue, and that the effects lasted at least 1 month after the intervention.
Even so, the article only recommends using this treatment as an adjunct to normal fibromyalgia treatment, not on its own.
But that’s a promising article for people with fibromyalgia who generally have a lot of pain and discomfort!
There are so many more articles out there on this topic, so I implore you to go out and do your own research, not only about Cryotherapy, but about any new fad that is emerging.
Don't get sucked in to the newest "cool" thing without investigating first! (Did you see what I did there? "cool" thing. Sometimes I'm such a nerd.)
Was this article surprising or helpful to you? What’s your reaction to reading about these studies? I’d love to hear feedback or reactions in the comments!
Articles mentioned in the blog:
- Whole-Body Cryotherapy (Extreme Cold Air Exposure) for Preventing and Treating Muscle Soreness after Exercise in Adults (Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2015).
- Cold pannicukitis: adverse cutaneous effect of whole body cryotherapy (from Journal of the American Academy of Case Reports, 2018).
- Death of woman in tank at a Nevada Cryotherapy Center Raises Questions About Safety (New York Times, 2017).
- Transient Global Amnesia Following a Whole-Body Cryotherapy Session (British Medical Journal Case Reports, 2017).
- Abdominal Aortic Dissection and Cold-Intolerance After Whole-Body Cryotherapy: a Case Report (Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine, 2017).
- The Effects of a Single Whole-Body Cryotherapy Exposure on Physiological, Performance, and Perceptual Responses of Professional Academy Soccer Players After Repeated Sprint Exercise (Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2017).
- Whole Body Cryotherapy, Cold Water Immersion, or a Placebo Following Resistance Exercise: a Case of Mind Over Matter? (European Journal of Applied Physiology, 2018).
- Effect of Whole Body Cryotherapy Interventions on Health-Related Quality of Life in Fibromyalgia Patients: a Randomized Controlled Trial (Complementary Therapies in Medicine, 2018).
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