Hot or Cold Compresses: How to Know When to Use What

It seems with my return to cycling a few months ago I am left with no end of topics to discuss which I hope you might find helpful.

This month’s article was inspired by a minor accident I had a few weeks ago while riding my bike early one morning. As I was heading north on Mississauga Road a driver coming from the opposite direction did an illegal u-turn into my path leading to me being thrown over the hood of her car.

Thankfully there was only minor damage to my bike and the woman accepted responsibility for her actions and promptly paid for the repairs.

In addition to the bike sustaining only minor damage, I had relatively minor injuries, a bruised hip where I hit the side of the car, a sprained shoulder from where I landed on the hood of the car and a sprained ankle from my foot getting caught up in the peddle. So all and all it it was not a terrible situation.

Although the injuries were minor, by the time the police showed up to charge the woman I could feel my body starting to respond to the bumps and bruising.

This left me with self-care when I got home to help mitigate my bodies response and the self-care got me thinking, “Wouldn’t this be a good time to remind my clients when to use cold vs heat?”

To begin with it’s good to understand how the body responds to injury so you can see which modality is best to use. There are three stages to the body’s healing process: Acute, Sub-acute and Chronic .

In the Acute stage (Immediately after injury to 4 days), as the body reacts to protect the injured tissue, you may experience:

• INFLAMMATION = Redness and Swelling
• Sudden, severe pain
• The inability to bear weight
• Decreased mobility or Range of Motion
• Muscle spasm
• Extreme weakness
• Visible dislocation or break of a bone
• Red, black, blue bruising