Muscle Pain Management: Heat Therapy vs Cold Therapy

Muscle injury is one of the common things for athletes and even for ordinary people, there’s a lot of way in treating the injury but the best action is to avoid the injury becoming more severe and painful.

Heat helps soothe stiff joints and make the muscle feel relax. Cold helps numb sharp pain and reduce inflammation occur at the location of the injury.

These two methods are very effective in treating muscle injury especially at the early stages, but most of people confused on when was the right time to apply which method especially in Malaysia where traditionally people will use “minyak panas” every time they got bruise or any injury regarding body muscle. That actually a wrong move as it considered as a heat treatment.

At the early stages you SHOULD NOT apply any heat at your injury as it will make your blood pump faster than usual and eventually amplify inflammation and your pain. You have to use cold treatment first in order to slow down the injury rate and reduce inflammation. At the latter stage of your injury, heat treatment is the way to go in order to increase the rate of recovery.

By Kamal Nizam