Cryotherapy uses extreme cold to reduce inflammation, ease muscle soreness, and speed recovery. How you use it depends on the type: a simple ice pack on a sore knee, a cold water plunge after a workout, or a full-body session in a chamber cooled to minus 148°F or below. Each method follows different protocols for temperature, duration, and frequency.
Types of Cryotherapy
Cryotherapy breaks down into two broad categories: local and whole-body. Local cryotherapy targets a specific area with ice packs, gel wraps, or a handheld device that blasts cold air onto a joint or muscle. Whole-body cryotherapy (WBC) exposes your entire body to frigid air inside a specialized chamber, or involves full immersion in cold water like an ice bath or cold plunge.
A bag of ice on a swollen ankle and three minutes in a chamber cooled to minus 150°F both count as cryotherapy, but they work at very different scales. Local treatments are inexpensive and easy to do at home. Whole-body sessions typically happen at recovery clinics, sports facilities, or wellness centers and cost anywhere from $30 to $100 per visit.
How Cold Therapy Works in Your Body
When cold hits your skin, blood vessels near the surface constrict, reducing blood flow to that area. This limits swelling and slows the signals that make damaged tissue feel painful. At the same time, cell metabolism decreases, which means less secondary damage from inflammation in the hours after an injury or hard workout.
Once you warm back up, those blood vessels open wider than normal, flushing the area with fresh, oxygen-rich blood and carrying away waste products that built up during exercise or injury. MRI studies have shown that cold water immersion at 5°C for 15 minutes measurably reduced muscle swelling and markers of muscle damage compared to untreated limbs. The combination of reduced swelling during cooling and increased blood flow during rewarming is what gives cryotherapy its recovery appeal.
With whole-body exposure, your core temperature also drops slightly as constricted blood vessels at the surface limit how much cold blood circulates back to your center. This triggers hormonal and cardiovascular shifts that can temporarily improve feelings of alertness and well-being.
How to Use Ice Packs and Local Cryotherapy
For a standard ice pack, gel pack, or bag of crushed ice, the typical recommendation is 10 to 20 minutes per session, repeated two to four times a day. Always place a thin cloth or towel between the ice and your skin to prevent frostbite. Research on knee cooling found that even after a full 20 minutes, gel packs and ice bags sometimes hadn’t driven skin temperature low enough for a full therapeutic effect, so consistency across multiple sessions matters more than extending a single application beyond 20 minutes.
For acute injuries like a sprain or muscle strain, you can apply local cryotherapy one to two times per day for the first 72 hours. After that initial window, scaling back to three or four sessions per week is typical until pain and range of motion improve. For chronic inflammatory conditions like tendinitis, a common starting protocol is three sessions per week for three to four weeks, then dropping to one or two sessions weekly for maintenance.
Athletes using localized cryotherapy as a regular part of training recovery generally benefit from two to four sessions per week, adjusted based on training volume and how their body responds.
How to Use a Whole-Body Cryotherapy Chamber
A WBC session takes place inside a chamber with two compartments. You first spend about 30 seconds in an adaptation room cooled to roughly minus 13°F, then move into the main chamber where temperatures drop to minus 50°F or colder, with some facilities going as low as minus 148°F. Sessions last between two and five minutes total, though research suggests there’s little additional benefit beyond two and a half minutes for most people.
Body composition affects how quickly you reach therapeutic skin temperatures. In one controlled trial, participants at a normal weight reached the target skin temperature in four minutes, while those with a higher body mass index reached it in three and a half minutes, likely because the insulating effect of subcutaneous fat keeps core temperature stable while skin cools faster.
What to Wear
You’ll be given or asked to bring specific protective gear: gloves, thick socks with shoes or slippers, and some form of headwear like a headband or ear covering. Most people wear minimal clothing otherwise (shorts, a sports bra, or underwear) so that as much skin as possible is exposed to the cold. A face mask is optional at some facilities. Jewelry, piercings, and any damp clothing should be removed, since metal conducts cold rapidly and moisture against skin increases frostbite risk.
What Happens After a Session
After you step out of the chamber, staff will typically monitor you for five to ten minutes. They check for excessive skin blanching, lingering numbness, or dizziness. You warm up naturally through gentle movement, like walking around or light stretching. There’s no need for hot showers or heating pads immediately after. Your blood vessels dilate on their own, and that natural rewarming process is part of what drives the increased blood flow that supports recovery.
Cryotherapy for Skin and Cosmetic Use
Cryo facials use a controlled stream of liquid nitrogen vapor directed across the face for two to three minutes. A full appointment lasts 15 to 30 minutes, but the actual cold exposure portion is brief. The rapid cooling constricts blood vessels in the face, and the subsequent rewarming floods skin with blood and oxygen. The result is a temporary tightening and brightening effect: smaller-looking pores, reduced puffiness, and a glow similar to what your skin looks like after a brisk walk in cold weather.
Results appear immediately but are not permanent. The tightened, glowy look typically lasts a few weeks before gradually fading, which is why most people who use cryo facials schedule them as a recurring treatment rather than a one-time event.
What the Evidence Actually Shows
The honest picture is that cryotherapy’s popularity has outpaced its clinical proof. A Cochrane-style review of whole-body cryotherapy for exercise recovery found only four randomized controlled trials, involving just 64 young adults total. The pooled results showed lower self-reported muscle soreness one hour after WBC, but at 24, 48, and 72 hours the confidence intervals were wide enough to include no benefit at all. The review concluded there is insufficient evidence to confirm that WBC reduces muscle soreness or improves recovery compared to simply resting.
That doesn’t mean cryotherapy is useless. Local cold application for acute injuries has decades of clinical support, and many athletes report subjective improvements in well-being and perceived recovery from both ice baths and chamber sessions. One small trial of nine well-trained runners found lower soreness scores one hour after WBC compared to infrared therapy, though the difference disappeared by 24 hours. The gap between what people experience and what controlled trials can confirm remains wide, largely because existing studies are small and use inconsistent protocols.
Who Should Avoid Cryotherapy
Whole-body cryotherapy carries real risks for people with certain medical conditions. An international working group published a comprehensive list of contraindications in 2023, and the conditions fall into a few main categories.
- Cardiovascular conditions: Uncontrolled high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, recent heart attack, heart failure, significant valve disease, arrhythmias, or a pacemaker or implanted defibrillator. The sudden cold triggers a sharp cardiovascular response that can be dangerous with an unstable heart.
- Vascular conditions: Peripheral artery disease, recent blood clots, deep vein thrombosis, or pulmonary embolism within the past six months.
- Cold-sensitive conditions: Raynaud’s syndrome, cold allergy, cryoglobulinemia (where abnormal proteins in the blood clump in response to cold), and sickle cell anemia.
- Other conditions: Severe hypothyroidism, chronic migraine, claustrophobia, and age over 80.
Even for healthy people, skin that is wet, numb from nerve damage, or has open wounds should not be exposed to extreme cold. If you’re using cryotherapy at home with ice packs, the main risk is frostbite from leaving ice directly on skin too long. The 20-minute limit with a barrier layer between ice and skin is a practical safeguard.