Cryotherapy and Osteoporosis

Cold therapy has gained popularity in recent years as a treatment to reduce the pain of athletes' sore muscles, among other uses and now it's been found to be helpful for osteoporosis patients, too.

Most osteoporosis patients pain is due to compression in the joints, lack of mobility and the inflammation that has resulted. Cryotherapy is a safe, short, effective treatment that will affect the entire system. The treatment involves applying nitrogen gas to the client's skin for 3 minutes, which dramatically reduces the body temperature for a few minutes. The theory is that the skin reacts by sending messages to the brain, which stimulates the regulatory functions of the body.

Osteoporosis generally doesn't cause discomfort in just one area, so with the cryotherapy being systemic, it's teaching the body how to combat pain and inflammation. The body goes into a healing state with the constant blood flow to the muscles, ligaments and tendons, and that is what is so beneficial with osteoporosis pain management.

Cryotherapy reduces pain and swellings, causes skeletal muscles relaxation and increase of their force, also, motion range in treated joints increases. Thus, cryotherapy seems to fulfill all necessary conditions for rehabilitation in osteoporosis. Cryotherapy represents numerous advantages: it takes short time for applying, being well tolerated by patient, also patient’s status improves quickly. All this makes cryotherapy a method for a broad use in prophylactics and treatment of osteoporosis.