Both hot and cold remedies are recommended by doctors when treating arthritis suffering caused by swelling to help take out the stiffness and inflammation and to lessen the pain. Arthritis can be managed with the right balance between both types of therapies.
Wheat bags are the most recommended method for using heat therapy; they can be quickly warmed in a microwave and then ready to use. They can be conformed or moulded to fit the contours of the body. They may also be used for cold therapy simply by freezing them.
Heat and being warm have been linked to relaxing comfort for centuries, and heat therapy does one better by adding healing and pain relief to its benefits in the treating of joint and muscle pain. Relief is almost instantaneous by applying heat to stiff, sore and tight joints and muscles.
Both cold and heat therapies are successful in getting your own body's healing functions spurred into action. You would use heat when you need to reduce pain in your body, and to lessen the stiffness you might have in your joints. Heat is also great for muscle spasms. What happens is the heat will enlarge your blood vessels, so that more blood can flow through them, speeding up the inflammation necessary to heal. These are the after effects of how your body responds to heat therapy.
What happens when you apply heat to any part of your body is that it joins up with the energy in your body in specific, localized regions. Your metabolism gets higher within all of your various cell types. This heat applied in a local region dilates your blood vessels, which causes more blood flow to occur. Muscle spasms are dealt with my relaxing the tension in key muscle areas, and allow the tendons of the muscle to stretch properly because they are relaxed. This happens because the heat lowers the collagen viscosity in these affected muscles. Collagen is a protein, one of the most common in your body. You can find collagen in tendon and ligaments, skin, the covering of your muscles, cartilage and in your bones. By lowering the viscosity in the collagen when you apply heat to an area, the tendons and muscles soften, allowing those muscles to stretch more comfortably and smoothly. Keep the heat on long enough, and your muscles and tendons enter a very relaxed state so that you can move them better and exercise them back into shape. This is what happens also when you use a wheat bag for heat therapy to heal cramps in your muscles, and in countering the painful effects of joint stiffness. Pain is handled well because heat will slow down and reduce the severity and frequency of pain signals sent from the nerves to the brain. So your brain can easily handle the soreness.
On the other side of things, cold has its benefits as well. Setting a cold compress in an area will counter swelling that is a result of enlarged blood vessels. The cold will do the opposite of heat and constrict those vessels. Cold therapy will numb the injured region and lower the effects of swelling and inflammation. Cold therapy is really good for pain in your joints caused by a flare-up of arthritis. Muscle spasms can also benefit by having the cold increase your body's tolerance for pain.
There are some people who like cold rather than heat therapy to treat the pain of their arthritis. Others will recommend both, by alternating treatments. The best thing you can do is to try each one, and go with the type of therapy that you find the greatest relief from using.
For joint and muscle stiffness, you'll want to apply either ice or heat packs to the suffering area two times per day at a minimum, to get the greatest results of relieving your pain. Each session should last from five to ten minutes on the cold compress, but get to it within forty-eight hours of when you first feel the pain, for it to be the most effective in treating it. Heat can be applied during this 48 hour time period also, so that your muscles can be given a chance to relax. Then use heat for any pain and stiffness that goes beyond the initial 48 hours.
A microwave wheat bag is a soothing way to release stress and ease everyday aches and pains. A wheat bag be easily heated in a microwave and then applied to tired joints and aching muscles with the user enjoying the soothing warmth. Wheat bags, heat pads and wheat cushions are a convenient method of applying heat therapy which has been shown to be an effective method for reducing muscle pain and reducing muscle and joint stiffness. They may soothe frozen shoulder and neck pains, give comfort to back or stomach pains, and ease arthritic pain. Wheat bags can also be chilled in a freezer and used as a cold compress as a method of cold therapy to ease sprains, swelling, bruising, headaches and sports injuries.
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