Cryotherapy is the use of extreme cold to treat pain, inflammation, skin conditions, and even certain cancers. It ranges from something as simple as an ice pack on a sprained ankle to a full-body chamber chilled to well below freezing, and it includes precise surgical techniques that destroy abnormal tissue with targeted freezing. The term covers a wide spectrum of treatments, but they all share the same basic principle: controlled cold applied to the body for a therapeutic effect.
How Cold Affects the Body
When your skin and underlying tissue are exposed to cold, blood vessels narrow rapidly. This process, called vasoconstriction, is driven by specific signaling pathways in blood vessel walls and local sensory nerves. The narrowing reduces blood flow to the cooled area, which limits swelling, slows the inflammatory response, and decreases nerve signaling that produces pain.
One interesting feature of this response is that vasoconstriction persists even after the cold source is removed. Researchers have observed that blood flow remains restricted during the rewarming period, suggesting that cooling triggers the release of chemical signals or causes a direct physical change in the tissue that outlasts the cold itself. This lingering effect is part of why a short session of cold therapy can provide relief that extends well beyond the treatment window.
For pain relief specifically, skin temperature needs to drop below about 13.6°C (roughly 57°F) to significantly reduce nerve-conducted pain signals. That threshold is the target most therapeutic protocols aim for.
Types of Cryotherapy
Localized Cryotherapy
This is the most familiar form: ice packs, cold compresses, ice baths, or cold water immersion applied to a specific body part. It’s commonly recommended after orthopedic surgery and sports injuries to reduce pain, swelling, bleeding, and secondary tissue damage from oxygen deprivation. Dermatologists also use localized cryotherapy with liquid nitrogen to treat skin lesions (more on that below).
Whole-Body Cryotherapy
Whole-body cryotherapy (WBC) involves stepping into a specially designed chamber cooled to extremely low temperatures. Protocols vary, but sessions typically last between 2 and 5 minutes, with research suggesting that 2 to 2.5 minutes is sufficient to trigger meaningful physiological changes. Some chambers use temperatures as low as minus 110°C (minus 166°F), though effective sessions have been conducted at minus 50°C (minus 58°F) with added air circulation.
During a session, you wear minimal clothing, usually a bathing suit, along with gloves, socks, shoes, a headband covering the ears, and a surgical mask to protect the airways. In multi-room chambers, you pass through progressively colder adaptation rooms before entering the main compartment. Body composition plays a role in how quickly you respond: in one study, people with a higher body mass index reached the target skin temperature in about 3.5 minutes, while those at a normal weight took closer to 4 minutes, likely because a greater surface-area-to-mass ratio allows faster cooling.
WBC is expensive and only available at specialized centers, which limits its accessibility compared to simpler cold therapies.
Skin Conditions Treated With Cryotherapy
Dermatologists routinely use liquid nitrogen cryotherapy as a first-line treatment for precancerous skin spots called actinic keratoses. The liquid nitrogen is sprayed or applied directly to the lesion, freezing and destroying the abnormal cells. Clearance rates depend heavily on the freezing protocol: a single short freeze cycle clears about 39% of lesions at three months, while freezing for longer than 20 seconds pushes that rate to 83%. When the target surface temperature is carefully controlled to reach minus 5°C, cure rates approach 100% at six weeks.
Most studies report complete clearance rates between 68% and 88% with standard double freeze-thaw techniques. One limitation is recurrence: about 28% of treated lesions can return within a year, which is higher than some topical alternatives. Still, the speed and simplicity of the procedure make it a practical option for individual spots. Liquid nitrogen is also widely used for common warts and other benign skin growths, following the same freeze-and-destroy principle.
Side effects from skin cryotherapy are generally minor. Temporary changes in skin color at the treatment site are the most common issue, along with brief tingling or numbness. Serious complications like deep tissue injury are rare, though they can occur if the freezing is too aggressive or poorly controlled.
Cryotherapy for Cancer
Cryoablation is a more precise medical procedure that uses extreme cold to destroy cancerous tissue inside the body. During the procedure, thin metal probes are inserted through the skin and guided to the tumor using real-time imaging from ultrasound, CT, or MRI. A gas circulates through the probes, freezing the surrounding tissue and killing cancer cells.
This technique is used to treat cancers of the bone, breast, kidney, liver, lung, and prostate. It can also help manage pain and other symptoms when cancer has spread to bones, organs, or lymph nodes. Because it’s minimally invasive compared to traditional surgery, recovery tends to be faster, and it can be performed under local anesthesia in many cases.
Athletic Recovery and Muscle Soreness
Cryotherapy has become a popular recovery tool among athletes, and the research supports its effectiveness for delayed-onset muscle soreness, the aching stiffness that peaks 24 to 72 hours after intense exercise. A large network meta-analysis comparing multiple recovery methods ranked cryotherapy among the most effective interventions for relieving this type of soreness, alongside cold water immersion. Both methods are now recommended in clinical practice for reducing exercise-induced muscle damage.
Both localized and whole-body approaches appear to help with recovery, though they work slightly differently. One comparative study found that while both reduced pain, whole-body cryotherapy also reduced fatigue, suggesting a broader systemic effect beyond the muscles directly treated.
Effects on Mood and Mental Health
Whole-body cryotherapy appears to have notable effects on mood. A systematic review and meta-analysis found a large overall effect on mental health symptoms, with particularly strong results for depressive symptoms. The effect on depression was very large in within-group comparisons, meaning people consistently reported meaningful improvement after a course of WBC sessions. Quality of life also improved, though to a more moderate degree.
When compared against control groups, the effect was medium-sized but still statistically significant. The current evidence positions WBC as a promising add-on treatment for depression and other mental health concerns, meaning it works best alongside standard care rather than as a standalone therapy. The mood-boosting effects are thought to stem from the body’s stress response to extreme cold, which triggers a cascade of hormonal and neurochemical changes.
Risks and Who Should Avoid It
For most people, cryotherapy carries minimal risk when performed correctly. The most common side effects are temporary: skin redness, tingling, numbness, or mild irritation at the treatment site. Skin color changes can occur after liquid nitrogen treatments and may take weeks or months to fully resolve.
Serious injuries are rare but possible. Frostbite is the primary concern with any form of cryotherapy, particularly if sessions run too long, temperatures are poorly controlled, or skin is in direct contact with extremely cold surfaces. There is at least one documented case of a full-thickness frostbite injury to a finger following liquid nitrogen treatment of a wart, requiring surgical reconstruction.
Whole-body cryotherapy raises specific cardiovascular concerns. Cold exposure increases blood pressure and has been linked in broader climate research to higher rates of heart attack and stroke when external temperatures drop. People with uncontrolled high blood pressure, a history of heart attack or stroke, Raynaud’s disease (where cold triggers painful blood vessel spasms in the fingers and toes), or other cardiovascular conditions should avoid WBC. Active inflammatory diseases and open injuries are also reasons to skip it. If you have any circulatory condition, get clearance from a physician before trying whole-body sessions.