Accepted for/Published in: Interactive Journal of Medical Research
Date Submitted: Jul 1, 2024
Date Accepted: Aug 30, 2024
Whole-Body Cryotherapy Reduces Systemic Inflammation in Healthy Adults: A Pilot Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Chronically elevated inflammation is implicated in many conditions including obesity, metabolic syndrome, and cardiovascular disease, and has been associated with increased mortality risk. Whole-Body Cryotherapy (W-BC) is a promising modality to treat inflammation with demonstrated benefits for clinical subpopulations including those with arthritis, obesity, and type 2 diabetes. However it is unclear if the benefit from W-BC extends to healthy subjects prior to chronic disease related inflammation. Additionally, the long term durability of W-BC effect is unknown.
Objective:
This retrospective study investigates the inflammatory response to W-BC in healthy adults with a biomarker of inflammation, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP), as well as clinical biomarkers of metabolism.
Methods:
Fifteen subjects participated in frequent recreational W-BC over approximately nine months and had blood draws at baseline plus follow-up visits. Biomarkers were modeled as linear functions of W-BC sessions received in the month prior to blood draw.
Results:
More W-BC sessions was associated with decreased hsCRP (-0.14 mg/L in hsCRP per W-BC session, p < 0.01) with durability of up to nine months. Increased W-BC was also associated with a downward trend in fasting glucose. This trend failed to reach significance at one month (-0.73 mg/dL in fasting glucose per W-BC session, p < 0.10), but was significant for two and three month windows (p < 0.05). Lipids were not affected.
Conclusions:
These results suggest W-BC beneficially impacts systemic inflammation by lowering hsCRP levels in healthy individuals and may also have some modulating effect on fasting glucose. Clinical Trial: n/a
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.