Why Ice May Be Bad for Sore Muscles

Another truth bites the dust.

Already, the benches in gym locker rooms and beside basketball courts are filling with 2012’s early casualties, those of us who, goaded by New Year’s resolutions, are exercising a bit too enthusiastically and developing sore muscles. Many of us will then drape ice packs over our aching muscles. But a new review article published this month in the journal Sports Medicine suggests that for sore muscles, ice is not always the panacea that most of us believe it to be and that, in some instances, it can be counterproductive.

For the study, researchers at the University of Ulster and University of Limerick in Ireland reviewed almost three dozen earlier studies of the effects of using ice to combat sore muscles, a practice that many who exercise often employ. Ice is, after all, the “I” in the acronym RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation), which remains the standard first-aid protocol for dealing with a sports-related injury. Icing is also widely used to deal with muscles that twinge but aren’t formally injured. Watch almost any football, basketball or soccer game, at any level, and you’ll likely see many of the players icing body parts during halftime, preparing to return to play.

But there has been surprisingly little science to support the practice. A 2004 review of icing-related studies published to that point concluded that while cold packs did seem to reduce pain in injured tissues, icing’s overall effects on sore muscles had “not been fully elucidated” and far more study was needed.

Last year, a small-scale randomized trial found no discernible benefits from icing leg muscle tears. The cooled muscles did not heal faster or feel less painful than the untreated tissues. But, as the researchers point out, it is difficult to scientifically study icing, since you can’t blind people to whether they are receiving the therapy or a placebo. People generally can tell if their muscles are getting cold or not.

Which leaves the findings of the new review about icing by athletes as the best overview we may have for now. And the findings are not altogether comforting.

The authors write that, in a majority of the studies they looked at, icing was quite effective at numbing soreness. But it also significantly reduced muscle strength and power for up to 15 minutes after the icing had ended. It also tended to lessen fine motor coordination. Some of the reviewed studies found that people experienced impaired limb proprioception, or their sense of where their limb was in space after it had been iced.

The result was frequently, at least in the short term, poorer athletic performance.

Still think they have any idea what they are talking about?