Thaindian News

New York, Oct 27 (THAINDIAN NEWS) If you believed that putting an ice on an injury was the best way to handle the condition, then think again. A new research has found that putting an ice on an injury may actually prevent healing of the injury.

The researchers have discovered that a hormone produced by inflamed tissue is vital to healing the damaged muscle or tissue. Therefore preventing the inflammation by placing an ice on it is not the right way to heal the injury.

The new research, which will drastically change the way injuries to tissues and muscles are handled, was published in the journal Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

The research was led by Lan Zhou, of the Neuroinflammation Research Centre at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

The research was carried out on two groups of mice. The first group was made of genetically altered mice that did not produce any inflammation in response to injury while the other group was made of normal mice.

The researchers then induced muscle injury by injecting the mice with barium chloride. After sometime, the scientists realized that the first group of mice had not healed but the second group had their muscles repaired.

Further tests on the mice revealed that the second group had high level of hormone called insulin-like growth factor-1 or IGF-1.

The editor for the journal Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology revealed that the study “goes a long way to telling us why - insulin-like growth factor and other materials released by inflammatory cells helps wound to heal”.