Cryotherapy

Cryotherapy

Shop/ELECTROMEDICAL/Cryotherapy

What is cryotherapy?

The term cryotherapy comes from ancient Greek and literally means "cure with cold".

Cryotherapy is one of the new treatment methods that have flourished in recent decades

of some aesthetic and medical conditions.

In reality, cryotherapy has very ancient origins: the therapeutic properties of the cold, in fact, can solve many ailments.

Cryotherapy, therefore, is not an alternative medicine based on empirical assumptions:

although this technique has its roots in the past and in tradition, over the years researchers and doctors have refined it more and more, to the point of making it a curative therapy in all respects.

Although medicine has made giant strides, current cryotherapy has maintained, in certain aspects, the basic concepts: the cold, anciently understood as a tool to relieve the simplest ailments (fever, bruises, muscle trauma), is now used

to treat medium-sized dermatological disorders,

such as warts, acne, angiomas, scars, tumors and melanomas.

Refining the term, in the dermatological field cryotherapy is also known as cryosurgery.

This technique can be used as a preferential therapy, an alternative to other more invasive techniques

(e.g. micro-surgery) or complementary.

Effects:

Effects of Cold Therapy on the organism

The practice of cryotherapy can affect different areas of the body; that's why it's a technique

which has many facets and can be used to treat different types of disorders.

The main effects that cold therapy is able to exert on the various tissues will be described below

and body systems.

Circulatory system

At a vascular level, topical cryotherapy causes constriction of the superficial blood vessels, which is followed by a subsequent and almost immediate systemic vasoconstriction (since some nervous reflexes are triggered which transmit the cold

in other districts).

This effect is stable until it reaches 15°C, while below this limit the effect is the opposite: it is thus established

vasodilation and the nerves are no longer able to transmit the cold signal (blockage of the nerve fibres).

Vasodilation, in fact, represents a process of self-protection of the organism, a defense that the system implements

to avoid blocking blood circulation.

Nervous system

Cryotherapy acts on a nervous level by decreasing the speed of transmission of signals.

Metabolism

Cryotherapy also exerts an action on a metabolic level: following the application of cold,

tissue metabolism slows down, due to the fact that metabolic-biochemical reactions are weakened.

Muscular system

On a muscular level, cold therapy is useful for relaxing the tissue and loosening the muscles.

Again, the effect of cryotherapy is twofold and complementary: the muscle can respond with an increase

or with a decrease in tone.

This depends on the time of application of cold to the affected area: whether the application of ice

is short-lived, there is an increase in muscle tone, vice versa in the case

where the application is prolonged.

Types of Cryotherapy

General, localized and systemic cryotherapy

Currently, there are various types of cryotherapy available to treat the most diverse disorders, from purely aesthetic ones, through bone and muscle disorders, up to the treatment of even very serious pathologies and affections, such as, for example,

some types of skin tumors.

Generally speaking, we can state that the main types of cryotherapy used today are general cryotherapy,

the localized one and the systemic one.

Although all cryotherapy techniques make use of the use of cold, they are very different from each other and are used for different purposes.