The panacea to pain using ice blocks

Hello steemians, great to be back once again to give you the best there is and will be. I will try and make this post as simple, concise and straight to the point. I will be dishing out knowledge about the science behind some actions most physicians and health care practitioners take in a bit to ameliorate a problem faced by a patient or victim.

Injured player, CC BY-SA

Today, I will briefly talk about the pain. Scientifically regarded as nociception. The body system of humans is made of different receptors that are strategically positioned at some points to detect different types of stimulus. Have you ever imagined a world without pain and how it's gonna look like Knowing that even if your hands are placed in a burning fire, you won't be able to feel anything meanwhile your hand is burning in fire.

Imagine what would have happened. That you are able to withdraw your hand from a hot substance is because you were able to detect that such substance was abnormal and doesn't suit or worth keeping the hand on.

One of the well known receptor is the pain receptor. Receptors are like sensors positioned on the body to detect any external stimulus. Pain results when inflammatory cells of the body migrate through the process of diapidesis to location of injury or impact. These inflammatory cells are usually triggers to migrate when inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin1 and interleukin 6 are released in large amount in the body system.

Let's take a footballer for example who is playing ball and then suddenly kicked by his opponent on the leg, he immediately feels the pain and if it a severe kick, it can result to injury. Now, because the body pain receptor detect the kick as an external stimulus, inflammatory cells immediately rushes to the site of the injury to fight or ward off what is causing the injury.

Once they arrive, you would observe that the point of injury gradually becomes swollen. The swelling is simply a sign that inflammatory cells are around to fight and protect the body.

Now you would observe that most times, in the field, the injured footballer is carried out on a stretcher. What next happens? You would also observe that the physicians places a pack of ice blocks on the leg of the injured player. Ever Wondered why they do this? Well, wonder no more, the answer is here.

Under cold temperature, the inflammatory cells do not come to site of injury. The ice blocks when placed on the players leg helps to disperse the inflammatory cells so that the swelling can reduce and in the process relieving the player of pain. In a nutshell, once the ice blocks are placed on the leg of the player or at any point where the injury is, it will help reduce the sweling by causing the cells to disperse.

So whenever you see them doing that, I believe you should able to understand the principle behind what they are doing. Yeah, hope this meets you well.

Until next time...stay safe.