Reevaluating Injury Care: Beyond Ice - Embracing the PEACE & LOVE Approach
By Dr Joey Lee Paul
We’ve all heard it before. You roll your ankle or hurt your wrist and someone is telling you to “put some ice on it”. The way we treat acute or sudden injuries like these is constantly evolving. There is a lot of research coming out about how we can best help these injuries heal.
The old saying used to be RICE
R: Rest
I: Ice
C: Compression
E: Elevation
However, things have changed. New research has emerged and the new recommendations are
PEACE & LOVE
P - Protection
E - Elevation
A - Avoid anti-inflammatories
C - Compression
E - Education
&
L - Load
O - Optimism
V - Vascularisation
E - Exercise
I know, the things you are expected to do after an injury have now essentially doubled. However, some of these are our (your health professional's) responsibility to manage and seeking assistance when you injure yourself can be extremely helpful.
Why no more “Ice”?
Importantly, you will notice that “ice” no longer gets a mention. Why?
New research has emerged that suggests yes that ice may have a pain-relieving effect. Essentially it acts as a pain numbing agent by cooling the skin’s temperature. This is why it might ‘feel good’ to ice an injury. However, ice does not seem to be able to have any effect on the underlying tissue temperature, which is likely the one you injured.
What has also been discussed is that ICE might be preventing or delaying the body’s natural healing process. Our bodies are very intelligent. When we injure ourselves it sends inflammatory cells to go on clean up dead tissue and start the healing process. By introducing ice, you may be limiting the release of these inflammatory cells.
Inflammation can get a bad wrap, however when you injure yourself inflammation is good, it’s a pretty important part of getting your injury healed. Now, inflammation can hang around for too long and potentially prevent injury, but that's a discussion for another blog post.
So if ice can numb our pain but delay our body’s healing, should we be using it?
Probably not.
There are some instances where a health professional might advise you to use ice, but until then, I’d say leave the ice in the freezer.