Cold water immersion, or ice baths, help reduce tissue swelling due to muscle breakdown and micro tears that occur during intense, or lengthy, physical activity and, also, help to control inflammation.

Some inflammation is a good thing but too much can lead to secondary damage or hypoxic injury.

The mechanisms include aiding normalization of body temperature, flushing out muscles due to constriction of blood vessels & compression through hydrostatic pressure, a decrease in metabolic activity, balancing of the sympathetic & parasympathetic systems and a reduction in muscle damage.

This infographic explains it well – courtesy of Yann LE MEUR, INSEP – @YLMSportScience

A type of tendonitis, tennis elbow can cause intense pain and while it is more common in people over 40 it can occur at any age.

It is the most common reason that people visit a doctor with elbow pain.

Healing of tendons and ligaments is much slower than muscle injuries due partially at least to the low blood flow in this type of tissue.

Typical interventions include strapping to minimise movement in the elbow and the taking of pain killers and anti-inflammatories alongside the application of cold. The bag of frozen peas being a common diy treatment.

The CryoSpa Mini offers much faster resolution of tennis elbow and similar elbow issues such as golfer’s elbow and pitcher’s elbow due to the intense penetrating cold.

Three or four sessions of typically 3 minute duration has been seen to have a dramatic impact on elbow pain.

The CryoSpa Mini may also be useful as a preventative modality for those at risk of over-use injury in particular competitive tennis & golf players and baseball pitcher’s.

Sports recovery i.e. post-exercise recovery is a non-medical application for CryoSpa therapy.

However, treatment of soft tissue injuries such as tendon & ligament sprains is considered to be medical use.

In the USA, the FDA, which approves devices & medicines for medical use, have exempted hydrotherapy, such as CryoSpa therapy, from Medical Device Approval requirements due to the low risk to patients and the non-invasive nature of the therapy. Consequently, CryoSpa therapy is available for medical use throughout the USA.

In other countries that adopt FDA guidelines this rule will also apply.

In the EU hydrotherapy is not exempt from medical device approval so a manufacturer cannot make medical claims for such devices.