Site:Hot and cold for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia
Hot and cold compresses for M.E / CFS muscle pain
The day I really started to get on top of my muscular aches and pains was when my Osteopath suggested trying hot and cold compresses. Osteopaths use these for treating injured, tense and inflamed muscles and there are specific methods to make it work. Time yourself to do seven minutes of hot then seven of cold, then seven of hot and then finish with seven minutes of cold, taking you upto around half an hour. A quicker alternative is to do 3 mins cold, then one minute hot, one minute cold, one minute hot, one minute cold and finishing 3 mins hot - ten minutes worth. Both methods are effective though I found the half hour was necessary for the large leg muscles and I used the shorter timing for the nerves coming off the spine, reducing the irritation which may well be a factor in M.E /CFS (see Osteopathy section).
If your muscles feel hot and inflamed then this method should be your first stop. You can buy packs from some chemists which do this job, which can be put in the freezer or the microwave, or barley bags for the freezer which can mould themselves to the contours of your muscles. However they are quite small because they are designed for localised injuries rather than treating, for example, the whole leg from hip to toe. I found the best solution was using two hot water bottles and two large freezer packs, of the type used to keep the beers at ideal temperature in a cool box (a large bag of frozen peas is another option!). They are also much colder to the touch than say barley bags. You may find the hot water bottle is too hot at first, or the freezer pack too cold, so have a t-shirt ready, and either put these inside, giving one layer of material between the pack and the skin, or even underneath the t-shirt giving you two layers of insulation. The hot water bottles cool down and the freezer packs warm up quickly, so get organised before starting to maximise the effectiveness of the treatment.
left: if our top scientists had billions of dollars and thousands of man-hours to cure CFS, would this be their solution?
You can do the treatment as many times as you like in a day, (although admittedly holding a pack of frozen peas on your leg while watching the clock has a limited entertainment value!) If you have say two hot water bottles and two freezer packs available you would probably use one on the upper leg and one on the lower leg, although if the legs are particularly sore you may need to do the hip and the upper leg in one session, then next time do the knee joint and calf muscle.
Of course if you're doing hot on one leg and cold on the other you can do both legs in the half hour, and this works fine. I have tried doing hot on the upper leg while using cold on the lower leg, but it didn't feel right, and I should imagine the blood vessels in the upper leg and lower leg need the same temperature at the same time.
The only real rules here are aiming for alternating hot and cold and getting a good contrast in temparature without burning yourself. So use whatever you think will work best (how about ice-cube bags?) sit in the bath, on your bed or sofa watching tv if you like.
For
Another approach I have tried is
soaking a towel in hot water then wrapping it round the
affected muscle. The towel will drop to below body
temperature in about 5-10 minutes so have a bowl and a
fresh kettle of water ready if you want to do another
application. This used to be a standard treatment for
children with fevers until anti-biotics dominated, so
maybe if you're
Cold baths!
Many cultures use cold water as a way to promote circulation and good health - how often have you seen travel programmes showing hardy pensioners in Scandanavia or Siberia happily swimming around in an ice hole? I'm not reccomending going quite that far, but 5 or 10 minutes in six inches of cold water can help to wake you up on those days when you're feeling sluggish, especially when you've had to sleep during the day.
Ice baths in sport
Post event Ice baths have become
the fashion for professional athletes these days -
Australian fast bowlers have been doing it for years and
have been less prone to injuries than most other
cricketing nations. And interviewed immediately after
setting her world record time in the London Marathon in
April 2003, Paula Radcliffe revealed her first priority
was an ice bath. The theory is it helps prevent the build
up of Lactic acid that will make the muscles stiff in the
following days. My reasoning was that as in
Cold baths helpful for sore muscles
Cold baths had some effect on me,
though not as much as I was hoping for, but it might work
better for you. If one of your main
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