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Inflammation is a healthy body response to stress, but chronic inflammation causes diseases. Abundant medical research now focuses more on addressing chronic inflammation, to both prevent and treat health conditions. You'll understand how cryotherapy works once you understand how inflammation causes disease.
How inflammation causes diseases
When we get hurt, the body triggers an immune response where the body sends a crew of immune cells and calls blood vessels to action to repair the damage and start the healing work: that’s the inflammation process. This process remains activated as long as it takes for the body to repair the damage (e.g. for a cut the body needs to stop the bleeding, regenerate tissues, scab and heal). Interrupting the mission of inflammation would eventually lead to a body that never heals itself.
When the body is unable to regulate the immune response, problems arise. What started as a healthy mission turns into its own enemy and becomes chronic inflammation. Eventually, chronic inflammation causes diseases and conditions such as allergies and asthma, arthritis, eczema, heart problems and cancer, to name a few. Contrary to its initial purpose, inflammation causes diseases because it reduces autoimmune reactions, destroys cells, causes muscle tension and compresses nerves and damages tissues.
How cryotherapy can help
Whole body cryotherapy was developed in 1978 by Dr. Yamauchi, a Japanese rheumatologist, after he discovered how effectively sudden cold exposure relived his rheumatoid arthritis patients pain and inflammation.
The genius of cryotherapy is in it's simplicity: the cold air so rapidly cools the skin that the mind activates "survival mode," whereby the body protects it's core temperature through peripheral vasoconstriction and redirection of the blood supply to the core. The cardiovascular system has a natural cleansing/replenishment process during which it removes inflammatory enzymes and toxins, and replenishes the blood with oxygen, nutrients, anti-inflammatory enzymes and red blood cells. After the short 3-minute cryo-session, this replenished blood is released back to peripheral tissues where it goes to work to combat inflammation.
The fact that chronic inflammation causes diseases is well recognized and accepted, although the reasons for its presence is still open for discussion. Stress, lifestyle, environment chemical stimuli, nutrition all some factors that lead to excessive inflammation.
With the trend towards non-pharmaceutical therapies that activate your body's natural healing mechanisms, perhaps it's time to dip your toe into cryotherapy--especially since it takes only three minutes to receive so many health benefits!