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Should You Ice Your Boo-Boo? More Studies Necessary, Says Meta-Analysis.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015 21:01

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IMG_5789 (Photo credit: creativevictuals)

If you don’t care about the discussion, just skip down to the boo-boo in bold.

In my recent post about most scientific studies being wrong, I began questioning the very basis for evidence-based medicine. How can we know what we know? When we do a large scale human study, we have to trust the results. We can’t run off to a lab and have them do it again.

So I thought a quick check into alternative medicine advances might be in order. As expected, most studies are small and underfunded compared to the massive studies produced by drug companies. And it is those massive drug studies that are in question for their ability to give us truthful answers about what will work. If they cannot be reproduced in a consistent manner, then what chance does alternative medicine have?

There is another avenue for medical knowledge, largely disregarded by current researchers but widely used by the public. It is the school of what works. One of the basics, something we are taught from the school yard, is that ice helps boo-boos. In more medical terms, cryotherapy is largely regarded at efficacious for the treatment of minor acute trauma. But is it true?

Do Boo-Boos Get Better With Ice?

According to the Cochrane Meta-Analysis entitled: Does Cryotherapy Improve Outcomes With Soft Tissue Injury? (free full article here) the researchers concluded: “no authors have assessed the efficacy of ice in the treatment of muscle contusions or strains.”

That’s right, mothers across America. You are applying ice to those boo-boos without a shred of scientific evidence that the ice is effective.

Until medical researchers address this ” large void in the literature,” you could be harming your child, or engaging in a worthless placebo effect.

Yes, icing has been shown to be effective after: “ligament repairs and knee and hip replacements. The results of these studies cannot be generalized to muscle strains and contusions.”

But ice works? You’ve seen it work? Mere anecdotal evidence. Unreliable and prone to patient bias. The researchers tenatively regarded ice as possibly helpful for pain, but concluded that: “Many more high-quality studies are required to create evidence-based guidelines on the use of cryotherapy.”

So until they do that, don’t waste your hard-earned health care dollars on ice cube trays and washcloths.

Let’s all wait until definitive studies conclude that ice does indeed help with boo-boos. It may not happen anytime soon, because ice is not patentable (although you know they keep trying). So we may need to create the “Boo-Boo Foundation” to fund ice research. Get ready to march in “Stop the Boo-Boos” marches and send your dollars in. Who knows? In a few decades we might just be able to apply ice to those bumps with the knowledge that it actually works.

Or, if you’ve been following the discussion about studies, we might conclude that good-hearted researchers might want to spend a little less time in the lab and a little more time in the playground. If they banged themselves on the monkey bars, they might just ask for a little ice.

Some things, because they work consistently and well, do not have research. Giving a hug and a kiss are also tried-and-true, unscientific, aids for boo-boo relief.