Cryotherapy treatment for athletics, illness and pampering is becoming established for healing strategies across all walks of life. It is a service that has been used for over a century, but now being revisited for the general public and generally for anything any aches, pains or needs to destroy unfavorable conditions or tumors in the body such as kidney or prostate cancer. Cryotherapy is known as Cryosurgery and Cryoablation.

What exactly is Cryotherapy? Taking a closer look at the definition, Cryotherapy is broken down from the Greek language as the following: cryo, means to freeze and therapy, means healing. The word Cryotherapy then means healing with cold; in this case extreme cold since temperatures for the process is sometimes as low as minus 160 degrees.

Cryotherapy has been social buzz lately when recently, Wayne Ellington of the Timberwolves and his teammates sought relieve from soreness in a cryotherapy tank in Dallas. The process used as a sports medicine for pain management requires a participant to stand in the vat looking container for about 3 minutes. It is said to be similar to an ice bath, but since it is much colder, less time needs to be spent in it to benefit from its effects. An ice bath for sports figures generally takes around 15 to 20 minutes.

A machine like the ones the Timberwolves insist they want at their home base cost bout $50,000 to install. Players and patients do have to take into consideration to not work out or shower before they use it. It can be dangerous if perspiration or water is on the skin before entering since either can freeze in the chamber then cause frostbite for the user.

Cryotherapy was originally a technique sort to shrink tumors. According Boris Rubinsky of the Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, his recollection of the history of Cryosurgery is the following:

“Toward the middle of the nineteen-century, physicists became interested in achieving and studying low temperatures. By mixing ice with various solutes, they were able to reach temperatures as low as 223 K with a mixture of ice and calcium chloride. Around 1845, Michael Faraday achieved a temperature of 163K by mixing solid carbon dioxide and alcohol under vacuum. During the same period, James Arnott of Brighton, England, who is recognized as the first physician to use freezing for treatment of cancer, began applying these low temperatures in medicine.”

Besides health maintenance, cryotherapy is now being used is for beauty, fitness and even chronic fatigue-syndrome. It does have side effects for some people giving bruising as one side effect. It is also said to activate endorphins. Perhaps it is why the procedure has been slowly beginning to be used in mental health conditions.