Kinisi Therapeutic Massage

Currently entering a very busy season in my life outside of the office. Availability will be very limited.

There are September openings available now and you can watch here for last minute openings!

www.kinisimassage.ca

Some last minute cancellations have opened up a couple spots this week

Monday 27th @ 9:00am *BOOKED*
Wednesday 29th @ 9:00am *BOOKED*

Also spots available next Wednesday and Friday!

www.kinisimassage.ca

Summer is in full swing, which means my office hours are limited. Only a few appointments are still available in July. Currently my cell service is very limited, so your best bet is to book online. Enjoy your summer!!

www.kinisimassage.ca

Are you still icing injuries? Time to rethink that! Below is a great summary from the founders of RAPID. I took a screen shot of some valuable information for those that don’t feel like a bit of a read.

Recently one of our therapists who was quite concerned over her colleague saying that ice won't speed healing, but that it won't delay it either. So we decided it was time to do some more research.

TBH, this debate is much bigger than just ice. Halting inflammation is the real issue.

Here's where we landed.

The guy who invented RICE took it back.

Dr. Gabe Mirkin coined the RICE protocol in 1978. In 2014 he publicly walked it back. His position, in his own words and paraphrased: ice and complete rest both appear to delay healing rather than help it. The doctor who wrote the rule the whole industry built its first-aid kit around quietly took it off the shelf. Most of the field never got the memo.

That should have ended the conversation. It didn't.

What ice actually does to the repair process.

When tissue is injured, the body runs a sequence. Vasculature opens. Neutrophils and M1 macrophages arrive to clean up the damaged cellular debris. Then the system pivots to M2 repair macrophages, which release IGF-1 and orchestrate satellite cell activation, collagen synthesis, and remodeling.

Each phase depends on the one before it. Weaken phase one, you compromise phase two, you blunt phase three.

Ice constricts blood flow. That feels productive when you're staring at a swollen ankle. Functionally, it slows the arrival of the cells responsible for both the clean-up and the repair.

Kawashima and colleagues (Journal of Applied Physiology, 2021) showed that post-injury icing delayed macrophage infiltration into damaged muscle, reduced IGF-1 expression, and impaired the regeneration of muscle fibers. Singh and colleagues (Frontiers in Physiology, 2017) reported the same direction of effect: smaller, weaker regenerating fibers in the iced group, with delayed revascularization.

Multiple clinical reviews land in the same place. Bleakley et al. (BJSM) and van den Bekerom et al. (J Athl Train) have both concluded that the evidence supporting ice for accelerating recovery from soft tissue injury is not there. The evidence against it is mounting.

So the claim that ice is "neutral" doesn't really hold. The data points the other direction. At best, ice gives you a few minutes of analgesia. At cost, it slows the very process that resolves the injury.

This is bigger than ice.

NSAIDs run on the same logic. Prostaglandin-mediated inflammation is part of the signal that activates satellite cells and drives muscle regeneration. Inhibit prostaglandins, you blunt that signal. The same body of research that worries about post-injury icing worries about NSAIDs for the same reasons.

The field, broadly, has been trained to fear inflammation. To treat it as the enemy. To shut it down.

Inflammation is essential to healing. It is not the injury. It is the body's response to the injury, and it is choreographed in a way the best chemists alive could not improve on. When we suppress it, we don't speed recovery. We extend it.

What this means at the table.

When a patient asks what to do for an acute injury, the answer is closer to "compression if it feels good, elevation if it feels good, loading within tolerance, hydration, sleep, and let your body do what it does" than it is to "ice it." If they ask about NSAIDs, that's between them and their doctor, but the conversation has changed.

This is also exactly the framing RAPID has always worked from. We stimulate the nervous system. We don't suppress it. We hand the body better information and let the chemistry it's already running do the work. Substance P, DNIC, endogenous opioids, M1 to M2 macrophage repolarization. None of that requires us to override the inflammatory response. All of it requires us to respect it.

Inflammation isn't the problem. Halting it is.

Summer is around the corner and it’s a busy time around here!
I have opened up my very limited summer hours. I hope to add some last minute, but there’s no guarantees!

If you miss out and want to be on the cancellation list, send me a message.

www.kinisimassage.ca

Openings for next week:

June 22nd @ 11:30am *BOOKED
June 23rd @ 1:00pm
June 24th @ 1:00pm
June 26th @ 10:30am *BOOKED

www.kinisimassage.ca

Only two openings left next week!

Monday June 15th @ 11:30am
Tuesday June 16th @ 12:00pm

Openings for next week:
Wednesday June 10 @ 9:00am *BOOKED*
Friday June 12 @ 9:00am, 10:30am, 12:00pm

www.kinisimassage.ca

Here’s your reminder that you don’t have to be good at something for it to be good for you. My runs are still more walks than runs, but movement is medicine!!
What’s getting you outside and moving these days?

FAQ #2
What kind of treatments are available?
Therapeutic massage with or without myofascial cupping and RAPID Neurofascial Release. More information about those in a future post!