The Effect of Cold Water Immersion Recovery on Muscular Damage Indices and Blood Cells of the Immune System

Physical activity without appropriate recovery causes structural damage to the muscles. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of cold water immersion and passive recovery after anaerobic performance on muscle damage indices and blood cell count.

The participants were ten trained female swimmers from Isfahan University of Technology with the mean age of 17.8 ± 2.2 years. First, they did the 100 meters front crawl in two separate days with 1-week distance. Then, they participated in one of the two methods of recovery intervention including 15 minute sitting beside the pool (passive or PAS) or cold water immersion (CWI) in 23ᵒC. Afterwards, both methods were followed by 45 minutes sitting beside the pool. Leukocyte profile and venous blood markers of muscle damage including creatine kinase (CK) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) were also measured pre-exercise and 1 and 24 hours post-exercise. Repeated measure and LSD were used for data analysis.

One hour after CWI, the mean level of CK significantly decreased and it was not any change in leukocytes, neutrophils and monocytes compared to PAS. One hour after CWI, LDH significantly increased comparing pre-exercise. All of these factors except CK, recovered to base measures after 24 hours.

It seems that after anaerobic performance, CWI can reduce damage and leukocytes count and improve recovery conditions.