{"id":5078,"date":"2019-12-10T05:12:43","date_gmt":"2019-12-10T05:12:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/?p=5078"},"modified":"2019-12-10T05:12:48","modified_gmt":"2019-12-10T05:12:48","slug":"ice-baths-arent-helpful-says-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/ice-baths-arent-helpful-says-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Ice baths aren\u2019t helpful, says study"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Successful athletes such as Andy Murray and Jessica Ennis-Hill are known for using ice baths after exercise, however new research has thrown cold water on this strategy. New research suggests that ice baths aren\u2019t helpful for repairing and building muscle over time, because they decrease the generation of protein in muscles. That\u2019s according to new research published in <em>The Journal of Physiology<\/em>.  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ice baths, also known as&nbsp;cold-water immersion,&nbsp;are still touted as a popular strategy for both acute&nbsp;recovery, on a timescale of&nbsp;hours and&nbsp;days, as well as adaptation to training over weeks and months. Researchers at Maastricht&nbsp;University found that ice baths&nbsp;are&nbsp;particularly ineffective for the latter, adaptation.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The idea behind ice baths is that by reducing body temperature, this in turn reduces blood flow, swelling&nbsp;and inflammation in tissues of the muscles. It\u2019s the same concept as the one behind icing a&nbsp;sprained ankle.&nbsp;While research has in fact confirmed that ice baths can be helpful for&nbsp;reducing&nbsp;muscle soreness, its effects on the formation of&nbsp;new&nbsp;proteins&nbsp;in the body, important for&nbsp;repairing and&nbsp;building muscle, are more controversial.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The researchers studied the impact of ice baths on the generation of&nbsp;new&nbsp;protein in muscles, which usually increases after we exercise, and also after we eat protein.&nbsp;They measured this using&nbsp;so-called stable isotope tracers and&nbsp;muscle biopsies, in&nbsp;a&nbsp;group of participants that did resistance exercise&nbsp;of&nbsp;both legs&nbsp;for two weeks&nbsp;(in total seven exercise sessions). After&nbsp;every&nbsp;exercise&nbsp;session, the participants immersed one leg in cold water (8\u00b0C)&nbsp;and found a decrease in the amount of protein&nbsp;generation&nbsp;in that leg.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cas Fuchs, one of the authors on the study said:&nbsp;\u201cEveryone exercising, whether they be weekend warriors or elite athletes, wants to get the most out of their workouts. Our research doesn\u2019t discount&nbsp;cold-water immersion&nbsp;altogether but&nbsp;does&nbsp;suggest that if the athlete&nbsp;aims to repair and\/or build&nbsp;their&nbsp;muscle, perhaps they&nbsp;should reconsider using ice baths.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New research suggests that ice baths aren\u2019t helpful for repairing and building muscle over time, because they decrease the generation of protein in muscles. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5079,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,35],"tags":[802,2048,2263],"class_list":["post-5078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsmakers","category-wellness-2","tag-exercise","tag-good-life","tag-ice-bath"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5078"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5080,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5078\/revisions\/5080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}