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You can't have a placebo effect of icebaths

Some new research questions the benefits of icebaths:

Ice-water immersion offers no benefit for pain, swelling, isometric strength and function, and in fact may make more athletes sore the next day

Then they find someone to question the new study, who says:

because it's subjective, there may even be a placebo effect on those who take the cold bath. Its part of their ritual, it finishes off the endurance test, and many clearly report that it makes them feel better

Now its true that you may get some benefits just from believing that the icebath works for you. But they aren't placebo effects. A placebo effect requires that you don't know what "treatment" you're getting.

If you're testing the effect of, say, drugs this is relatively straightforward. You give the placebo group a plain pill that looks like medicine. But even then, some patients will work out they're in the placebo group because they don't have any side effects of a drug.

It's impossible to have a placebo group in a trial of tepid vs. ice water because [nearly everybody] will be able to tell the difference between tepid and ice water ...

Icebaths are great. Right now I'm living in a climate where I get the icebath throughout some of my runs ... That is one good thing about a cold southerly in Wellington! It probably keeps the riff raff out, as they say.

Posted by eroberts at July 11, 2007 7:24 PM