Sports and Soft Tissue Injury

Recently I was in the change room at half-time at a local Highett Football Club game. Players were pressing plastic bags full of crushed ice against pulled muscles and bruises like security blankets. Knowing there was a better way, I wondered why ice is used at all for sports injuries. Ice does not stop bleeding either from the skin, the nose or from deeper tissues.

Researchers have shown that ice can cause inflammation and swelling in the deeper tissues which significantly slows recovery.(1) There also seems to be little agreement among experts about how long ice should be applied.(2) Ice, ethyl chloride spray and other coolants may numb the skin and perhaps relieve pain a little, but essentially they do little if anything to assist or hasten tissue recovery.

Yet it appears these rather primitive methods are all that’s available for emergency treatment of sports injuries. If they don’t stop the bleeding that predisposes to slow healing and recovery, then they shouldn’t be used. But what alternatives are there? Isn’t there SOMETHING that does a better job? Yes, wheatgrass does. Considering the enormous amount of playing and working time lost from sports injuries, not to mention the pain and disability they cause, it’s time the sporting world woke up to this strikingly superlative alternative treatment method.

How can wheatgrass be more effective than ice?

Let’s look at an example. The young footballer pictured below received a hefty boot to the head causing a massive bruise within minutes (Left). On the right is the bruise less than 24 hours later.