Pain Relief: Ice or Heat?

 Hey

Doctor Ryan Alter

your Delray Beach chiropractor. I want to talk today about the difference between using cold or using heat when you have a back injury. So in my office every day, I’m telling people to go home and put a cold pack on their back or their neck or wherever their problem is. Cold is a vasoconstrictor.

So it constricts the blood vessels and it pushes blood away from the area because we’re concerned about inflammation. We don’t want a pooling of blood causing inflammation. Heat is a vasoconstrictor. Is a vasodilator. So it opens the blood vessels and all this blood comes to the area and it brings nutrients and it feels good.

So there’s a time and a place for that. But I would say about 90% of the time in my office, we are recommending cold because there’s almost always an inflammatory component to these problems. The only time I’m telling people to use heat.  is if they’re achy and a little bit sore, not pain. If there’s pain, I’m using cold and I recommend you use cold.

We’re here in Delray Beach. We’re a resource to you for anything spine related

anything health related. We want to make sure that you are feeling your best.