It is can be very hard to decide which therapy works best to treat arthritis. Therefore if you are debating of whether to use hot or cold therapy to treat your arthritis pain you will usually be better off using a cold therapy to treat this pain. Although many people commonly use heat therapy for arthritis, most people get better results with ice therapy because of the numbing effect of the cold. Cold will give a numbing sensation and will also reduce the pain and muscle spasms in arthritis.

The main reason why ice therapy is not so popular is because the first few minutes are not very comfortable. However if you’re strong and get through this time you will notice and may even be surprised at how the pain relief that one can achieve.

The best advice when doing cold therapy is to try and apply the ice until numbness starts to occur. However, if you feel to much discomfort and it feels like torture then stop the treatment.

There are many ways to do cold therapy. You can choose to use ice packs made by a plastic bag stuffed with ice, commercial iced products, and ethyl chloride spray. Another option is ice therapy, and this works by filling a Styrofoam cup with water and freeze it. Once it is ready to use peel the lip from the cup and apply the ice directly to the joints for five to seven minutes to help reduce the pain. Another option includes contrast bath. In this way you will alternate the hot and cold treatments. This is usually done by alternating cold packs with hot packs. Alternating temperatures with water between hot and cold water can help relieve the pain. When doing this treatment be careful that the water heater is set low enough to prevent scalding.