Here is my quick response and I'll post longer later.
As I've said, it may be that what your are saying bears out. But, and I mean no disrespect when I say this, one or two studies is not enough to change medical practices and I think you are putting too much stock into studies themselves. Evidence from studies must be examined and built upon. While it is true that some doctors stubbornly cling to dogmatic practices is is also true that they don't base their medical decisions on just one piece of evidense that
suggests areas of research but comes far from proving or disproving anything. Each study of this nature is wrought with problems. It takes more. That is what I mean when I say "widely accepted". Being on the cutting edge is all fine and good but we can't blindly follow every new idea that comes along until it has stood up to scrutiny and is backed up by other research, ideas, experience, etc. I'm sorry if it is frustrating but this is really how science works. What is in the first aid part is not about my views. I'm just reporting the majority opinion. It is not meant to replace a doctor's opinion and for that matter, a study someone sees should never do so either.
What Kane is talking about, however the doctor explained it to him, represents why doctor's recommend it and it is just what I said: to reduce the chances of further injury to the vulneralble area. Could this be wrong? Sure, but do we KNOW it is wrong based on enough studies? NO. The last time I had an injury the orthopedist said ice in his experience led to better outcomes. Same thing with my wife. She's hurt both her knee and ankle recently. Ice on both. Was the doctor stubbornly clinging to outdated views? I don't really think so.
About ice and inflamation, ice is not thought to play any role at all after the initial period of injury and instead is thought to be counterproductive.
Some of this stuff is a little confusing. On one had you get people saying inflamation is natural, swelling is natural, don't interfere with the body's natural healing process. All well and good up to a point. Then you get the same people ignoring the body's signal. Namely pain. Pain is your body's way of telling you something is wrong. You apply heat to an early injury it can and will increase bleeding and swelling. The result will be increased pain. Your body's way of telling you something is wrong...get my drift?
BTW, on the NSAIDS I agree. I am only talking about RICE. NSAIDS are not part of RICE. I think you are taking the thing about inflamtion, putting cold therapy's role in that and tacking it on to the anti-imflammatory studies. But the only real way to study the effectiveness of cold-therapy is to study cold therapy. You can talk about inflammation and it's role in healing but it is not clear whether reducing inflamation is mechanism in cold therapy. It is one possible mechanism. What I am trying to say, in a nutshell, is the jury is still out, but the court is still leaning toward RICE (for initial first aid).
I understand how it's frustrating to have me questioning studies, but on the other hand, consider that I researched all this very very hard, and came accross all these things and more before I decided what to put in. I won't you to know that I didn't just throw this together based on the first thing I googled. That thing I posted above is just one of many things I have saved. So you can see why I might be a little frustrated too, lol, but instead instead I welcome the discussion because I think it is good to question.
I kept my mind open and my mind is still open. But we are not scientists. At least I am not. Taking every new study, wrought with it's limitations, and going with it in the interest of being cutting edge without looking at what the scientific medical community is saying is not, imho, going to serve us well in these medical subjects.
I think we have to be a little sober in our attitudes. But let me be clear that the last thing I want is for the first part of this thread to be incorrect or damaging. I certainly would like to do away with old outdated ideas. But just because something is old doesn't mean we should close our minds to it in the interest of being, I dont know, modern I guess. Galileo was one guy. If he were living today his ideas would still have to be examined and scrutinized by other scientists. And there would always be guys studying his work and trying either to prove it right or wrong. And he was kind of exceptional wasn't he? Not everyone's ideas should be looked at like that of a Galileo, Newton, Einstein, or Doogie Howser. If you look at the review of cryotherapy research I posted you'll see that they concluded only that there wasn't enough research.
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Originally Posted by Iron
It's frustrating to post an actual study showing and proving that when X was done then we saw X happen and have someone say they disagree. Disagree with what? It's not a matter of opinions, they're worthless.
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Well I'm going on and on aren't I? When I said I disagree about RICE I wasn't disagreeing with the particular study showing a particular thing. I simply disagree that that is enough to abandon RICE. There's a difference in there, I think.
Again, on the NSAIDs thing I posted some really good reviews on that. But that is not about RICE. It's two different subjects.