S E13: Ep 13 – If you are in pain should you use Heat?
You have woken up with a sore neck, thrown something, and hurt your shoulder or twisted your ankle, then gone straight onto the Internet looking for the best way to treat the problem.
These days, when we have an injury, we either ask Dr. Google, YouTube, or Tik Tok for a solution, and we are guaranteed to get thousands of options for what to do next.
Welcome to this week’s episode of the Pain Free Living Podcast with Bob Allen, your friendly neighbourhood osteopath and pain management expert.
Today, we’re looking at the benefits of heat therapy for sorting out your muscle and joint problems. Using heat is a natural and effective approach for pain relief, which can also help improve your flexibility and speed up injury recovery.
Benefits of Heat Therapy
Applying heat to sore muscles or stiff joints increases blood flow, delivering more oxygen and nutrients to the affected area and taking away inflammatory products and carbon dioxide. This helps reduce pain and joint stiffness, and relaxes muscle spasms, making it ideal for chronic problems like arthritis, fibromyalgia, and old injuries.
Heat therapy can be as simple as a warm shower, a heat pad, or a soak in a hot bath. By helping your muscles relax, heat improves joint mobility, making daily activities and exercise easier and more comfortable. Also, regular heat therapy can lead to significant improvements in pain and function for people with chronic muscle and joint problems.
Things to know before using heat
While heat therapy is generally safe, it’s not suitable for everyone or every situation. Avoid using heat on acute injuries (less than 72 hours old), areas of recent redness and swelling, open wounds, dermatitis, or infections, as it can worsen inflammation and delay healing.
Also, if you have impaired sensation due to problems like diabetes, circulatory problems, or heart conditions, you should get advice from a healthcare professional before using heat therapy.
Limit heat treatment to 20 minutes at a time and make sure the temperature is warm rather than hot to prevent burns. If you experience increased pain, redness, or skin changes, remove the heat source immediately and seek advice.
Takeaways
- Heat therapy is a cheap and effective solution for relieving muscle and joint pain and improving flexibility.
- It is ideal for chronic problems like arthritis, fibromyalgia, and old injuries.
- Avoid applying heat to recent injuries where there is swelling and inflammation or altered sensation due to problems like diabetes.
More about Bob
You can find out more about Bob and why he became an osteopath here https://bit.ly/BobsOsteoStory
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Pain Free Living podcast with me, your host, Bob Allen.
Speaker A:treating people in pain since:Speaker A:What we're going to talk to you about today is heat and when you use heat.
Speaker A:Because as an osteopath people often ask me, I've got an injury, my back hurts, I've sprained an ankle, what do I use?
Speaker A:Do I use heat, do I use ice, Do I use both?
Speaker A:Do I, do I do contrast bathing?
Speaker A:What do I do?
Speaker A:So what, so I'm recording this podcast so I can just point them to the podcast.
Speaker A:So yeah, you've got an injury, what do you do?
Speaker A:So it depends on the type of injury.
Speaker A:So ice is suitable for where you have a traumatic injury and you're getting swelling and inflammation.
Speaker A:I've already recorded a podcast on ice can work on that sort of, that type of injury to reduce pain, reduce swelling, but that's at the price of increasing the healing time.
Speaker A:Now if you've got an a traumatic injury like you've sprained ankle, you've injured the knee, you've injured the shoulder and you're starting to get, it's starting to get that redness, it's starting to get that inflammation.
Speaker A:Inflammation is a good thing and part of the natural healing process.
Speaker A:So, so don't worry about that.
Speaker A:What you want to do is to potentially reduce some of that pain.
Speaker A:So if you've got, say a muscle related injury, you've got a muscle sprain.
Speaker A:Oh, sorry, a muscle strain and ankle ligament tendon sprain.
Speaker A:Then if it's getting red, hot and angry, the last thing you want to do is to put heat on it because the redness is the blood vessels dilating to let, to increase blood flow.
Speaker A:So it increases blood flow, oxygen and nutrients to the area and it contributes to the healing process.
Speaker A:Inflammation is a good thing.
Speaker A:Now you may want to, like I said, if you use ice, it'll slow down the healing process, but it may make the problem more tolerable.
Speaker A:If you've got inflammation, like I said, redness, heat, swelling, the last thing you want to do is put heat on it because that will make it even angrier.
Speaker A:That will increase blood flow.
Speaker A:That will, yeah.
Speaker A:If you've got a, if you've got an inflamed traumatic injury, the last thing you want to do is put heat on it.
Speaker A:So you want to let things settle down for, for at least two or three days so that the inflammation process and the things are a Little bit less acute, then you might want to think about putting heat on it.
Speaker A:But initially don't put heat anywhere near it.
Speaker A:Where he has a benefit is if you've got, if you've had, particularly with back injuries, if you've got that feeling of really tight muscle, the back doesn't want to.
Speaker A:Doesn't want to release, then you might want to put some heat on it.
Speaker A:Because what heat does is it increases blood flow and helps muscles to relax.
Speaker A:So that's generally when you want to use some heat.
Speaker A:Whether that's a microwavable heat pad, whether that's a hot shower, spray some of that heat on there.
Speaker A:And that will help to reduce.
Speaker A:Yeah, it helps to reduce the tightness, it'll help to increase blood flow.
Speaker A:Increase blood flow always means more oxygen and nutrients going to the injured area, taking away the waste products and the breakdown products that are part of the natural inflammation process.
Speaker A:So there you have it in a nutshell.
Speaker A:That is the benefits of heat.
Speaker A:Again, what I'll do is I'll put some stuff in the show, notes about when you should use heat.
Speaker A:Pretty much covered that.
Speaker A:But when you shouldn't use heat because there are certain situations where you don't want to use heat.
Speaker A:And like I said, one of the key ones is traumatic injury, redness, swelling, all of those things.
Speaker A:Do not put heat on it.
Speaker A:I hope that will make sense.
Speaker A:I will be doing more of these kind of little videos, so hope you found it useful.
Speaker A:If you found it useful, please tell your friends, share it with everyone that you know.
Speaker A:And yeah, let's get the word out there about when to use heat, when to use ice.
Speaker A:That's me, Bob Allen, and I will see you at the next one.