Cryotherapy in sports

WBC process triggers the enrichment (with hormones, enzymes, oxygen) of blood and circulation to the internal organs under higher blood pressure. When the cryotherapy session is completed, the body undergoes rapid vasodilation as the higher internal blood pressure drives the enriched blood back to the peripherals. The body has also released endorphins into the blood, providing a euphoric feeling and mood improvement. Since cryotherapy does not freeze tissue and muscles, the body can immediately return to exercise mode. A fundamental possibility to use cryotherapy in sport is generally recognized, but there are no worked through methods and no established use directions of this new treatment in practice. Partly that situation can be explained by the fact, that cryosaunas were very expensive  and the worse fact – they were stationary. The second important reason is that the effects described in literature, not always coincide with practice.

It is  concerned with  absence of clear idea about the technology and physical mechanism of cryotherapy. By the description of the process, main attention was drawn to the inessential factors and vice versa important treatment factors were missed. In addition to it the majority of settings for the cryotherapy don’t ensure the temperature stability in treatment room, because of errors in the construction and deficient installed power. It means that it doesn’t provide main treatment condition – efficiency and we can only guess if cryotherapy in such state was effective.

A proper Cryotherapy treatment ensures:

  • Quick and long-term anesthetization of pain of any origin
  • Take off the joint stiffness
  • Stimulates the endorphins outburst
  • Raises the coverlet temperature up to 4- 5 0C
  • Stimulates the regenerative processes
  • Improves metabolism

Based on the made above list of positive cryotherapy treatment results, it’s possible to plan a potential directions of its use in sport.

  1. Stimulation of the training process due to temporary individual advantages suppression. WBC creates the prerequisites for a total function correction of the organism to nominal parameters. It was noticed, that the speed of response decreases after the cryotherapy by people with a quick response and vice versa people with a slow response become a faster response.Presumably cryotherapy has the similar effect on the other physical properties of an athlete: endurance, power etc. Depriving the person of his innate abilities it is possible to stimulate the training process. The same method is used in figure skating, when athlete use  extra weight during the trainings, and at the competitions they perform without extra weighting material, therefore they perform without particular strain.
  2. Sports medicine – analgesic and regenerative action of cryotherapy allows accelerate injuries treatment , breaks, burns treatment etc. without analgesic or medicines. Injured organ is interpreted by the organism as anomalous zone and the immune system concentrates on it and creates conditions for accelerated healing process.
  3. Training process –  forming of sufficient motivation for  higher  results achievement , while training process is one of  coach’s problems. The psychological weariness accumulates  while intense training process because of frequent exercises repetition. Powerful endorphins outburst makes up the psychological overloads, just after the cryotherapy, and after 6-8 hours patients feel relaxed, they don’t feel the tension and fall into a deep healthy sleep.
  4. Massage and rehabilitation – analgesic action and take off the joint stiffness, fasten the rehabilitation after  injuries, patient can take an active part in trainings and load an injured organ. That accelerates the recovery of physical strength and prevents the complications. The increase of pain tolerance and warming-up of the skin surface raise the efficiency of massage.
  5. Prophylaxis of the sickness rate – infectious and catarrhal diseases disrupt the planned training for the competitions, degrades the results, therefore the prophylaxis of the sickness rate is of great importance. Systematic cryotherapy treatment provides  good immune state and prevents diseases.