Cold-water immersion (CWI) is one of the most frequently used recovery protocols in sports. Infrared Thermography has been previously used for analyzing skin temperature responses after cryotherapy resulting in a safe and trustworthy method for monitoring thermal responses (Matos et al., 2015) even when it may overestimate the recorded measurements (Maley et al., 2020).

The thermal behavior of the human body is a combination of heat transfer and heat generation at various levels, micro (molecular and cellular), meso (tissue and organs) and macro (thermal interaction with the environment) (Bhowmik et al., 2013). CWI might exacerbate these thermoregulatory processes and thermography might be a useful tool to detect altered responses in skin temperature after CWI.

The objective of the second study from the doctoral dissertation of Arnaiz-Lastras published in 2017 was to determine the acute effects of CWI on the skin temperature of professional football players by means of thermal imaging, focusing on the cooling and rewarming processes and differences between dominant and non-dominant sides.

The results showed an increased rewarming speed only for the dominant hamstring . Being this area one of the most injured ones in football (Ekstrand et al., 2011) the author suggests a potential increment in the thermal response after CWI that could be related with the demands of the past game.

References:

• Bhowmik, A., Singh, R., Repaka, R., & Mishra, S. C. (2013). Conventional and newly developed bioheat transport models in vascularized tissues: A review. Journal of Thermal biology, 38(3), 107-125.
• Ekstrand, J., Hägglund, M., & Waldén, M. (2011). Epidemiology of muscle injuries in professional football (soccer). The American journal of sports medicine, 39(6), 1226-1232.
• Matos, F., Neves, E. B., Norte, M., Rosa, C., Reis, V. M., & Vilaça-Alves, J. (2015). The use of thermal imaging to monitoring skin temperature during cryotherapy: a systematic review. Infrared Physics & Technology, 73, 194-203.
• Maley, M. J., Hunt, A. P., Bach, A. J., Eglin, C. M., & Costello, J. T. (2020). Infrared cameras overestimate skin temperature during rewarming from cold exposure. Journal of Thermal Biology, 102614.