Hot/cold muscle treatment.

R

R.Lewis

1
What’s the best the best treatment for a healing muscle?
And…
How can you tell if a muscle has been over worked or you have pulled it?

The reason I ask is that I occasionally get a muscle that take over a week to heal when the rest take 3-4days. This can be quite annoying when your left bicep is fine but the right one hurts.

I know someone is gonna say the obvious that the best treatment is nutrition, but I’m talking about what I can do to make the muscle heal faster.

I was under the impression that for a healing muscle you use heat treatment, But on a 1st aid course I was told to use ice.

Lastly, for either hot or cold treatments, is it better to use the “deep heat/cold” creams or to stick with ice/hot-water bottle? I always feel that the creams just seem to effect the skin and don’t penetrate into the muscle.

Sorry about the scatty questions.
 
a muscle hurting that long, you either over did they hypertrophy to a bad degree, or pulled something.

I haven't started my personal trainer studying yet, but I do think heat/cold with breaks is a good recovery method. I think stuff like icy hot is about pointless. but those warming body patches appear to do a decent job. not sure if they sell those in the UK yet.



those are different than the creams.
 
what i find to work is to take a small towell, soak it in hot water and put it on the muscle and rest.
 
so we are sticking with the heat treatment, not cold, right?

Yeah I have a bean bag that you put in the microwave, its long enough to cover both your traps or a quad which is very handy.
 
i think both ice and warmth treatment. read the "ice bath" thread, same forum as thisone, was an article posted there about recovery, im guessing it could be relevant to your problem.
 
conventional wisdom is to apply ice for the first 24 - 48 hours, then followed by heat if the swelling subsides but discomfort persists. the purpose of the ice is to reduce swelling, which is best accomplished right after the onset of injury. If you apply heat first, you can exacerbate the swelling, and thus lengthen the recovery period. Google "RICE" - which stands for rest, ice, compression, elevation, the common treatment method for sports injuries.
 
Yeah, thats what I was told on my 1st aid course, however I wanted to know how to tell if a muscle is injured rather than just a little over worked.
I dont understand the science behind icing a muscle for recovery
 
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