Cryotherapy Massage
Tell your pain to chill out with a cryotherapy massage.
Cryotherapy Massage
I often use cryotherapy in my pain management sessions. While applying cold in a massage may sound unpleasant, it is deceptively delightful.
When cold is used, it is gradually introduced so you are not overwhelmed. To ensure you feel wonderful every second of your session, I start with a cool basalt stone. The chill is gentle enough to feel pleasant and reassuring.
What Are The Benefits of Ice Massage
Why use cryotherapy like cold stones and ice massage?
Pain management massage helps you develop your somatosensory awareness, desensitize your nervous system, and retrain your brain so that it refrains from creating unnecessary pain.
Cold therapy triggers the mammalian dive reflex, which signals the nervous system to slow your heart rate, reduce stress, and shift you toward a state of peace and ease. This helps desensitize your nervous system, creates an opportunity to strengthen your mind-body connection, and, when combined with patternistic applications, can help retrain your brain to avoid creating unnecessary pain.
When Is Cryotherapy Used
Almost everyone has the same pain patterns, but no one is identical. Because of this, pain treatment must be personalized, because although we are more similar than we are different, everyone is magnificently unique.
Elevated Pain Levels & Sensitivity to Touch
Just because an area hurts doesn’t mean you are experiencing hyperesthesia. We all experience pain and increased sensitivity to touch from time to time.
Fortunately, cold therapy isn’t reserved just for people who are in excruciating levels of discomfort. It may also be used for people who have elevated pain levels or increased sensitivity to touch. In these instances, pain management uses cold to help you regulate your brain’s amplified response to discomfort.
Inflammation
When ice or cold is applied to a targeted area, it helps reduce localized inflammation via vasoconstriction. Vasoconstriction is the narrowing of blood vessels to reduce blood flow. This helps lower tissue metabolism and decreases the release of inflammatory chemicals.
Sensory Variety
The brain’s ability to identify patterns of safety is vital, but when a technique, method, or approach feels repetitive, it triggers the PAP Threshold response.
The PAP Threshold stands for Pleasure-Annoyance-Pain and represents how our nervous system responds to redundant stimulation. Something that feels good can become annoying if used in excess; if the sensation continues, it will develop into pain.
An example of this phenomenon can be witnessed when someone is scratching your back. At first, it feels great, but their gentle scratches can quickly become annoying and painful as their movements become too predictable and boring.
Cryotherapy introduces new sensory information that resets the nervous system’s perception of touch, thereby avoiding a PAP Threshold response.
Hyperesthesia
Cryotherapy can help people experiencing pain by slowing the rate at which the insular cortex receives nociceptive signals, because cold reduces nerve conduction velocity.
Nerve conduction velocity is the speed of electrical impulses traveling along nerve fibers. In effect, the cold prevents a traffic jam of pain from reaching the brain.
Cryotherapy can also elevate sensory thresholds. One benefit of elevating sensory thresholds is that it reduces interoceptive sensitivity.
Another benefit is that it numbs a local area, which reduces the sensitivity of superficial touch receptors (like Meissner’s corpuscles) and free nerve endings. This raises the activation threshold. The activation threshold is the minimum stimulus strength required to activate mechanoreceptors that send sensory information to the brain. This can significantly reduce tactile sensitivity or completely numb an area.
For someone in pain, this can be a game-changer. While cryotherapy may not permanently remove the pain, it can provide you with a break. This break, when used in a safe, patternistic way, can encourage the development of positive neurotags as your brain begins to identify safety within.
Cryotherapy may also assist with vasoconstriction and Edema control. Cold narrows local blood vessels and helps prevent fluid from pooling around raw nerve endings. When this fluid interacts with nerve tissue, it places the brain on high alert. Decreasing the volume of this fluid lowers the pressure on nerve tissues, which can help reduce pain amplification by lowering central sensitization.
Ticklish
A tickle response is more than a tactile signal; it is also an emotional response, often mixed with playfulness, panic, or an urge to escape. It is a complex sensation that can be pleasurable, meh, hurt-so-good, rewarding, and even painful.
Each type of tickle sensation has its own meaning and value. Sometimes the sensation of a tickle during a massage is the nervous system gently thanking you for addressing it. This type of tickle is faint and strangely pleasurable, but sometimes tickles aren’t so fun. Some people are so ticklish that it triggers a sympathetic nervous system response, prompting them to wiggle away reflexively.
- Normal tickling, also known as gargalesis, is a neurological function that helps to protect the body and promote social bonding.
- Hypergargalesthesia is a pathological condition characterized by extreme hypersensitivity to tickling. People who suffer from hypergargalesthesia often experience an overamplified somatosensory response to the slightest touch.
Allodynia
Allodynia is a condition that causes non-painful stimuli like light touch, a breeze, or even lukewarm water to trigger an intense pain response. Depending on the type of allodynia someone has, cryotherapy may provide profound relief or unrelenting agony.
If allodynia is triggered by physical movement, light rubbing, or local tissue inflammation, people with allodynia may benefit in the same way as someone with hyperesthesia. However, if they have a condition like CRPS (Complex Regional Pain Syndrome), advanced diabetic neuropathy, or post-herpetic neuralgia, cryotherapy can be dangerous or worsen pain.
Why is cryotherapy not suitable for people with CRPS?
While cold may help normalize the insular cortex in someone with hyperesthesia or a healthy nervous system, it is contraindicated for people with CRPS because it can have a highly volatile effect on them. The danger lies in how the disease disrupts the nervous system and blood flow, rather than in the perception of temperature or negative neurotags.
CRPS disrupts the sympathetic nervous system, leading to erratic vasoconstriction. Even mild, pleasant coolness can trigger a strong sympathetic response, leading to constricted microvessels and potentially causing localized microvascular hypoxia. This may result in metabolic acidosis, nociceptive hypersensitivity, and ectopic nerve firing. Although these effects do not have the same life-threatening ramifications as main-artery blockages, they may worsen the disease through sensory, metabolic, and physical pathways.
Schedule A Massage Today!
Ready to experience how cryotherapy and massage can be combined? Pain management massage with ice massage can offer targeted support to reduce discomfort while supporting recovery. Learn more about pain management massage.
Jennifer Brand Spa
Pain Management at 2717 Hwy K, O’Fallon, MO 63368