From cold-water swimming to ice baths, deliberately freezing yourself has been hailed as a panacea for everything from menopause symptoms to arthritis, headaches and immunity conditions.
And for sportspeople, ice is widely used to aid recovery after exercise. But now researchers have said the clinical benefits of ice therapy are not evidence-based and its popularity is bad for the environment.
With the Paris Olympics starting on Friday, academics from France, Qatar, India and Switzerland argued in an editorial, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, that the use of ice at the summer Olympic Games has reached “extraordinary levels” despite the lack of proven efficacy.
The amount of energy and water needed to produce, store, and transport the ice is not good for the planet, to say nothing of its cost, they added.
While about 22 tonnes of ice were delivered to the competition venues of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics for medical purposes and another 42 tonnes were provided in the Olympic Village, the requirement for the 2024 Paris Olympics vastly exceeds those figures, the academics noted.
Initial estimates were for 1,624 tonnes of ice – at a cost of €2.5m – but after no independent vendors were able to fulfil the public tender the Paris games revised its estimate to 650 tonnes (450 for the Olympics and 200 for the Paralympics), the paper said.
Cold-water immersion accounted for about 10% of treatments prescribed by physiotherapists at the Olympic polyclinics in Athens 2004 and London 2012, rising to 44% by Rio 2016. Of the immersions, 98% were for recovery purposes with the rest treating injuries.
While cold-water immersion is good for treating heat exhaustion, after exercise in hot temperatures, and for muscle soreness, it should not be used for recovery between consecutive bouts of high-intensity training, nor for immediate or long-term recovery after resistance exercise.
“Ice usage at the summer Olympics has reached extraordinary levels, potentially stressing local and regional resources,” the academics concluded. “When planning for the provision of ice, organisers should aim to minimise the use of non-evidence-based practices and promote better sustainability. Ice should remain available for certain situations, including acute pain relief, specific recovery needs, and management of exertional heatstroke.”
Responding to the findings, Paulina Kloskowska, a doctor of sports and musculoskeletal physiotherapy at King’s College London who often works with elite athletes, said that high-level sport had always operated on the “outskirts of evidence” to achieve “marginal gains” in performance, injury prevention or recovery, and that concerns about the overuse of ice were valid.
She said: “There is increasing data emerging that heat therapy is in fact better for long-term muscle recovery in such circumstances, and that early and frequent ice and cold therapy can decrease the tissue resilience, the capacity to bear loads, or adapt in a healthy way.”
Dr Richard Budgett, the International Olympic Committee’s medical and scientific director, said the study should help ensure the Games use ice as effectively and as rationally as possible. “In addition, there are ice alternatives available, including a cooling system with filtered water chilled to 10C, allowing us to considerably reduce energy consumption. We will continue to monitor this aspect carefully [for] viable evidence to further reduce the amount of ice used at future Games, aligning with best medical practice.”