Should I ice it?
I’ve been dealing with an injured foot for over six weeks now. I’ve tried resting it, stretching it, strengthening it, massaging it, ignoring it, running a little, walking, not running or walking, and I had shockwave therapy. Every time I think it’s getting better, it starts to hurt again for no apparent reason. Finally today I decided to take a page from Risky Business and say “What the F*ck.” Remember Joel says that, then his life goes completely bonkers but everything works out in the end. I figured the same thing would happen to me, right? I decided to do my own version of a Turkey Trot. I was trying to think of a different name for it, but then realized there’s not much slower than a “trot,” so that name works. I walked the first mile to warm everything up and then ran two miles, then walked the last .1. Victory! My foot didn’t hurt at all, but I’ve been dealing with this long enough to know that means nothing. Still, it was amazing to be out there, running on such a beautiful day. Then, home for pumpkin oatmeal and tea from my Thanksgiving mug! We made a LOT of food. And then there was dessert… I know. There are four of us and we had three pies. Well… I don’t eat sugar so one of the pumpkin pies is made with a monkfruit sweetener. The rest of the family won’t eat that one. And they like two different pies on Thanksgiving., so they got their own pumpkin and an apple-cranberry pie. If you do the math correctly, that means I have an entire pie to myself, muahahahaha…. It will be a challenge, but I think I can make it through the whole thing before the weekend ends. By the evening my foot was really hurting. So I did something I haven’t done in a long time… I iced it. Yes, you may have noticed in the opening paragraph, with all the things I’ve done for my foot there was one thing missing. I haven’t iced an injury in a long time, because I follow the new advice that RICE actually isn’t beneficial. This article explains it really well. Dr. Mirkin, who coined the term RICE in 1978, now says he regrets adding the “ice” part of the treatment. The idea is that inflammation is the first step in healing, and ice interferes with that step. The most important thing an injury needs is circulation, to bring crucial nutrients to the injured area and remove waste products. The new acronyms are PEACE and LOVE (sorry, I didn’t make that up). PEACE stands for Protect, Elevate, Avoid anti-inflammatories, Compress, Educate, and LOVE stands for Load, Optimism, Vascularization, and Exercise. I don’t know… I think they were stretching it a little to make some fun words there. Optimism? Anyway… The idea is to increase circulation as much as possible through movement. But, since I was saying What the F*ck I decided to ice it. The one thing about ice is that it decreases pain so it felt good while I was doing it. Other than that it didn’t seem to help or hurt. I would probably have to ice it on a more consistent basis to see any effect though. There are definitely still a lot of people who recommend icing, but after re-reading the pros and cons of icing, I think the evidence is against it. I can discuss it with my doctor, because I’ve decided to try that route again (although not the same doctor who told me running is bad for my joints). No, I’ll go to a different doctor this time! I hope everyone had an amazing Thanksgiving with lots of running and lots of pies! Er… pie.