Is Heat Good for Sore Muscles?

Soaking in a hot tub or sitting in a steam room can be fantastic. A heating pad placed on a painful area of your lower back can help it feel less achy after a long day of lifting boxes or hunching at your computer.
Going to the sauna is perhaps the ultimate full body application of heat.  After a long day of work, sometimes you may experience back pain or perhaps staring at your phone too long, you experience neck pain, but after sitting in the hot tub or laying in the sauna, you can feel your muscles loosen. 

But is it actually speeding up recovery, or does it just feel good?
The answer, it turns out, is yes. How heat interacts with sore muscles is still largely mysterious, but there are a few things that scientists can say. For one, it does ease pain. According to the American College of Physicians, using a heat wrap reduces pain more than a placebo and potentially even more than medications like Advil or Tylenol.
But what are the best kinds of heat? Is a hot bath better than a heating pad? How long after exercise is it most effective? Here’s what researchers know about what happens when heat gets under your skin.

Why does heat feel so good on achy muscles?When you warm up a portion of your body with a heating pad, your blood vessels relax, increasing blood flow to the area. With this increased blood flow comes more oxygen and nutrients that can help heal muscle tissue, said Dr. Walker Yost  from Full Spectrum Chiropractic in Olympia WA.
Heat also leads to chemical changes, such as lowering levels of cortisol in the blood and releasing endorphins, regulating your nervous system and reducing systemic inflammation.


What kind of heat is best?
Here at Full Spectrum Chiropractic we use direct application of moist heat, clay packs which sit in hot water.
Our goal is two-fold, to relieve pain as well as soften the muscles in order to make an adjustment to the joint that  muscles are attached to.
Several small studies have suggested that heat coming from a wet source can be more effective than dry heat for preventing pain and reducing muscle damage from exercise. One study, conducted on participants who did a series of squats designed to make their quadriceps sore, suggested that moist heat penetrates deeper into tissue faster and works more quickly than dry heat. It’s not clear whether full-body heat immersion, like using a hot tub or sauna, has the same effect on muscles as localized heat applied directly to an area.

Rather than simply increasing blood flow to a small area, a hot tub or sauna speeds up circulation throughout your body and directs blood flow away from your muscles and toward your skin. This is a wonderful way to maintain healthy skin and general wellness.


What about timing and temperature?
The best time to use heat on sore muscles seems to be immediately after exercise, and ideally for several hours, 10min on 10 minutes off. Temperatures between 102.2 and 104 degrees Fahrenheit can increase inflammatory responses associated with pain. Temperatures over 105.8 can have the opposite effect, reducing inflammation and pain says Dr. Walker.  A  study in which participants maxed out their leg muscles with squats, researchers compared the effects of using heat wraps right after exercising or 24 hours later. Muscles that were warmed immediately — for two hours with moist heat or eight hours with dry heat — experienced less damage and retained more strength than those heated later.