Using ice or heat to your advantage can help you overcome injuries sooner, but how can you know which method is right for your situation? When you’re dealing with an ankle sprain, should you target the area with a heating pad, or should you elevate your ankle and plop an ice pack on it? In today’s blog, we explain if ice or heat is the best option for managing an ankle sprain.
Icing Or Heating An Ankle Sprain
Before we dive into the nuts and bolts of this blog, we just want to preface that the following is general advice. While many people will find the following advice helpful for standard ankle sprains, for best results, it’s important to seek out a consultation from a specialist who can view your injury in person. Advice from a treating physician should always take precedence over general advice on the internet.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s explain how you can harness the power of ice and heat to your advantage when you’re working to overcome a sprained ankle. Many people find that ice is quite helpful in the first 24-72 hours following the injury, and heat is most helpful 3-14 days after the injury. But why is that the case?
To better understand while ice and heat are used during these post-injury time periods, let’s explore the physical impact that these two treatments have on your body. Let’s start with ice and cold therapy. When your body is cold, blood vessels constrict in order to limit blood flow to the extremities. This leaves more blood in areas with essential organs, like your heart, kidneys and lungs. And while you don’t need to divert more blood to essential organs following an ankle sprain, using ice in a specific area can force blood vessels to act like blood needs to be diverted. In other words, they constrict because they believe they need to restrict blood from oxygenating less vital areas.
And while this doesn’t completely deprive your feet of blood, it does really limit the amount of fluid that can get into an area, and fluid buildup is quite common after an acute injury. When you suffer an acute injury like a sprain, an inflammatory response is triggered, bringing fluid and white blood cells to an area. This localized inflammation is designed to limit some movement and hopefully protect the area from additional strain, but excessive fluid can be counter-intuitive to the healing process. Too much swelling and inflammation can negatively impact your circulation and fluid movement in and out of the area, prolonging the healing process. Essentially, we want to use ice in the short-term right after an injury to prevent an overactive inflammatory response. We want to constrict blood vessels for a short while so excess fluid doesn’t build up in the area during an inflammatory response, but after this swelling has been prevented for a day or two, we want to switch course. That’s where heat comes in.
After you’ve controlled the inflammatory response, you may find that turning to a heating pad is optimal. Heat works in opposition to a cold pack, as heat will open up your blood vessels and make it easier for oxygenated blood to reach specific areas. A healthy dose of oxygen- and nutrient-rich blood is exactly what your body needs to continue fueling the repair process, so regular use of a heating pad can boost circulation and in turn speed up the recovery process. Using ice right after an injury and turning to heat once swelling and inflammation has been controlled can get you back on your feet sooner after an ankle injury. Just be sure that you pair these passive techniques with active interventions that will seek to strengthen your injured ankle ligaments. Stretching, physical therapy and low-impact exercise will do much more for helping you return to a pre-injury level of fitness than passive techniques like ice or heat will.
For more information about ice or heat in the treatment process, or for assistance overcoming an ankle or foot injury, reach out to Dr. Silverman by filling out this contact form.