Hot and Cold Therapy Supplies - Hot Packs, Ice Packs, Paraffin

Most medical experts recommend the local application of hot and cold therapy as the safest and most practical method for treating chronic and acute pain. The local method requires heating pads or heat packs and reusable ice packs. You also need a stopwatch to time each application and interval. When you are ready to start, the best therapeutic ratio is 1 minute of cold to every three minutes of heat. To reduce inflammation, you should repeat this pattern around three sets, beginning and ending with ice. Unless instructed otherwise, you should apply hot and cold therapy once or twice a day until your injury heals. If you want to skip this alternating routine, you can use hot and cold packs instead.

Heat therapy reduces muscle pain, soreness, and tightness by dilating your blood vessels to increase blood flow. As a result, the increased circulation assists in flushing out exercise-related lactic acid waste. As a result, heat therapy products like the McKesson Instant Hot Pack are more therapeutic than cold therapy and ice packs. In addition, heat therapy may relieve headache spasms when applied to your neck.

Cryotherapy is a medical procedure used for destroying abnormal tissue at freezing temperatures. During the treatment, the doctor uses a bottle of liquid nitrogen and argon gas to create a severe cold to treat internal and external medical problems. Some conditions benefiting from cryotherapy are bone cancer, cervical cancer, retinoblastoma (retina), liver cancer, skin cancer, and various skin conditions. Since it is minimally invasive, doctors often use cryotherapy as an alternative to open surgery to remove disease or damaged tissue resulting from many medical conditions.

Cold treatment with products like ColPaC Gel Ice Pack reduces blood flow to an injury. So, you would use cold treatment to curb inflammation, tissue damage, and swelling. Plus, cold therapy serves as a local anesthetic by numbing injured tissues and slowing pain signals to the brain. Therefore, it works best when treating inflamed injuries within 48 hours. On the other hand, heat therapy with products like Thermophore MaxHEAT Deep-Heat increases blood flow to relieve muscle stiffness and tightness by eliminating lactic acid build-up from exercise, hard work, or athletic competition. As a result, heat therapy is more applicable for ongoing ailments like osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, muscle strains, tendonitis, and lower back pain. You can also use a product like Thera-Temp Microwave Moist Heat for warming up muscles before physical activity.

Instant cold packs are single-use products composed of two bags. One inner bag is full of water. And the outer, containing bag holds ammonium nitrate and calcium. When you squeeze the instant cold pack, the internal water bag will break open and mix with the chemical in the outer bag. As a result, this chemical reaction absorbs heat from the surrounding environment and instantly lowers the packs’ temperature to near freezing, providing around 20 to 25 minutes of pain-relieving coolness. Since they don’t require refrigeration, instant cold packs are a perfect cold therapy remedy for sports teams, way stations, and hikers.

Paraffin wax therapy provides substantial therapeutic benefits for people who have fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, and many injury-related pain types. It is also a great option to fight pain from severe and debilitating illnesses. Since paraffin wax has a low melting point, you don’t need to melt it at high temperatures. This quality is why paraffin wax therapy is the main component of thermotherapy, which uses heat to alleviate soreness and deliver comfort to painful areas. It also boosts blood flow and circulation, providing oxygen to distressed areas of your body for pain relief. In addition, since heat relaxes your muscles, products like the Waxwel Paraffin Unit help promote more range of motion and mobility.