Team India skipper Virat Kohli is sweating hard in the practice sessions to prepare himself for the upcoming IPL tournament. After rigorous training, he takes an ice water bath to relax, and shares the pictures in his recent Twitter post.
Kohli is not the only athlete who swears by an ice bath as it helps in recovery after a competition. Many footballers, baseball players, rugby players and weightlifters have been doing this sports therapy for years. Heptathlete Jessica Ennis-Hill, the former track and field athlete from England, used to stand in a wheelie bin of iced water for the sake of her muscles. Andy Murray used to spend eight minutes after every match in an ice bath.
What is an Ice Bath?
It’s not uncommon to see athletes, fitness enthusiasts and weekend warriors jumping into an ice bath after physical activity. In the world of sports, ice bath therapy, which is sometimes called Cold Water Immersion (CWI) or cold therapy or cryotherapy, is a training regimen usually following a period of high-intensity workout or competition, in which a substantial part of a human body (ideally up to your chest), is immersed in a bath of ice or ice-water maintained between approximately 10–15° Celsius or 50–59° Fahrenheit for a limited duration of approximately 10 to 15 minutes.
Potential benefits
The possible mechanisms postulated for the use of cold water immersion therapy post-exercise include:
1. It improves your mood.
The greatest benefit of ice baths, most likely, is that they make the body feel good.
It stimulates our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, stress response, and recovery process, all of which contribute to a natural high and boost mood and attitude.
Cryotherapy can also aid in sleep and make you feel better by being less fatigued.
The vagus nerve is an important part of the parasympathetic nervous system, connecting many organs such as the brain, heart, liver, and gut. Exposing your body to cryotherapy increases stimulation of the vagus nerve. While your body adjusts to the cold, sympathetic activity declines, while parasympathetic activity increases.
2. It can help improve reaction time and explosiveness in future workouts.
With intense exercise, there will be some microtrauma and tears in the muscle fibres affected. This muscle damage will stimulate muscle cell activity (hypertrophy in the long term) and help in the repair and strengthening of the muscle. This is also thought to be the explanation for the delayed onset pain and soreness (delayed onset muscle soreness), which often presents 12–72 h post-exercise.
The ice bath will cause constriction of blood vessels. This has been suggested as a mechanism that helps with the flushing of waste products, such as lactic acid, out of the affected tissue.
With the cold temperature, there will be a reduction of the metabolism and this can cause slowing down of the physiological processes.
The cold temperature will reduce swelling and tissue breakdown. Ice water immersion is also said to be able to shift lactic acid.
The drawbacks
1. The most noticeable drawback of an ice bath is feeling very cold. But beyond this superficial side effect there are some other risks.
2. The primary risk of ice bath applies to people with preexisting cardiovascular disease or high blood pressure. The decrease in core temperature and the immersion in ice constricts blood vessels and slows the blood flow. This can be dangerous if you have decreased blood flow as it can heighten the risk of cardiac arrest.
3. Another risk that may happen is hypothermia, especially if you are spending too much time in an ice bath.
4. People with type 1 and type 2 diabetes must be careful with ice baths since both of these are associated with reduced ability to maintain core temperature during extreme temperature changes.
Things to know
Temperature: The temperature of an ice bath needs to be approximately 10-15° Celsius or 50-59° Fahrenheit.
Time: Spending too much time in an ice bath can have adverse consequences. That’s why you should limit your time to no longer than 10 to 15 minutes.
Body exposure: It is recommended to take a dip in the ice bath to gain the best effect of blood vessel constriction. However, you may want to first expose your feet and lower legs. As you get comfortable, proceed further.
Timing of bath: The sooner you get in an ice bath after a workout or competition, the better the effects should be. If you wait an hour after the workout, some of the healing and inflammatory processes have already begun or finished. When it comes to how often you should take an ice bath, the research is limited. Although it is important to note that acute bouts of an ice bath to facilitate a quicker recovery is alright, its chronic use should be avoided.
Ice baths should be reserved for after the hardest training sessions or races, or if you will be performing again soon afterwards (like back-to-back races). It is most beneficial for short-term recovery between events or high-intensity workouts.
The writer is fitness & sports medicine specialist.