Heat and cold therapy means a warm pack, an ice pack or a table that warms you with infrared heat, placed on a sore knee, shoulder, hip or back. At PRP STL it usually opens a physiotherapy visit: cold settles a flare, heat loosens stiff tissue, and your physician chooses which one you get.
Your physician orders this treatment and sets its strength. You receive it only when it is written on your orders.
What is heat or cold therapy?
A pack or a heat table is placed on the area that hurts, with a towel layer between it and your skin. It is a short first step that gets the tissue ready for the rest of the visit.
How does it help a joint or tendon?
Cold slows swelling and dulls pain in a fresh injury or a flare. Heat relaxes tight muscle and draws in blood, so the stretching and strengthening that follow go further. Around an injection, your physician tells you which one to use and when.
What does it feel like?
Heat should feel warm and pleasant, never hot. Cold starts cool and turns slightly numb. Your technician looks at your skin after 5 minutes.
Who should not have it?
- Numb skin, or skin with poor feeling
- Heat on a bruised or puffy injury from the last 3 days; we switch to cold
- Cold if you have Raynaud’s, cold hives or poor circulation in that area
- An open wound, a rash or a burn
- Heat on the belly or lower back if you are pregnant
- A fever or an infection
At the start of each visit your technician reads the safety questions aloud. If something has changed, the physician makes the call before anything starts. You may ask to stop at any point.
How long does it take?
About 10 to 15 minutes.
What to remember
- Cold for a flare; heat for stiffness.
- Warm is right. Burning is wrong; say so.
- Between your skin and the pack, there is always a towel.
Show us you have it: At your visit, name the one you use at home after activity, how long it stays on, and how you keep your skin safe. Anything still unclear? Ask, and we will go over it with you again.
Keep reading: what the weeks after PRP feel like, the sore days right after an injection.
Other treatments in the program
It belongs to the physiotherapy program for PRP and joint care at PRP STL. A physician orders and watches over every treatment, and nothing starts unless one can step in right away.
Ask whether this belongs in your plan
Your physician looks at the joint or tendon, your metabolic health and what you have already tried, then builds the plan around you. Book an evaluation or get the free guide.
12174 Natural Bridge Rd, Suite 303
St. Louis, MO 63044