Inflammation and icing – how it affects your horse.
Think back to any baseball or football movie you have seen – the star player walks around with ice taped to his shoulder or sits in a giant vat of ice water. This isn’t Hollywood magic – it’s taking care of the microinflammation caused by repetitive motions. Like your horse trotting around. Let’s go deeper into your horse’s legs to see how this breaks down.
jump to shopping
How inflammation and cold therapies work in horses.
- Injuries and routine exercise both create inflammation. Injured tissue, like a tendon tear or even a scrape, gets flooded with blood.
- Unfortunately, the injury has broken blood vessels, so they will leak into the surrounding tissue. This creates painful inflammation and swelling.
- Ice therapies serve new injuries by constricting vessels and not allowing the leakage of fluids and blood into surrounding tissues. This prevents a large amount of fluid for your horse’s body to clean up and heal, thus healing times can be reduced.
Boots, while providing protection, also retain heat in your horse’s legs.
Similarly, when your horse is exercising, his legs and muscles generate heat.
- This is amplified under protective leg wraps and saddle pads. Capillaries are dilated (opened up) during exercise to provide blood and oxygen to these areas.
- After work, there can be a build-up of extra fluid, which causes inflammation as well as muscle soreness.
- After exercise, ice therapies serve to reduce soreness and bring your horse’s athletic game back up to par.
But what about older injuries and the aches and pains that go along with aging and being an athlete?
- Ice therapy can definitely help there, as well. Old injuries respond to ice as the constriction of blood vessels can have a pain-relieving effect.
- Additionally, when the ice is removed, the area is flushed with a fresh supply of blood, which contains an army of injury repairing substances such as white blood cells and other housecleaning substances.
Ice boots remove heat, speed healing, prevent soreness, and support your horse’s long-term health.
An ounce of prevention…
- While it may seem silly to perform ice therapies on a sound horse or a horse that has recovered from an injury, it’s actually the best thing you can do to support your horse’s health!
- Preventing soreness, aiding in recovery from exercise, and supporting the long-term health of your horse’s legs mean a happy athlete. And you only need 30 minutes a day!
Stock up here for your horse supplies! As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases, but it’s ZERO extra cents to you. You can also visit my Amazon storefront here: PEG storefront.
If hooves are your jam, this book is for you.
A simple and trusted hoof supplement.
The gold standard for stinging hooves and anytime you need to pack the hooves.
Hi-quality no-bows with Back On Track reputation (that's good!)
These boots are the gold standard for jumpers and horses that like to interfere.
Support and softness for laminitis and other painful hoof conditions.
Buy bulk and save! This is great for stubborn hoof infections like seedy toe and thrush.
Feed your horse's hoof health from the inside out.
This supplement helps high-laminitis risk horses and has calming ingredients like magnesium.
The gold standard for bell boots in a rainbow of colors.
Be practical when wrapping your horse's legs with a traditional color, but toss in some spice with the understated pattern!
Protect your horse's legs and let them shine bright.
These boots are my favorite for wrapping hooves with poultice or clay and a diaper. No more duct tape boots! You can also use inserts with these for more squish.
This style is great to protect the hoof, but is not soft and squishy for laminitis cases.
Show off your horse's legs with these safe, reflective, and fashionable boots.
Skin protection that can get wet. Use code PEG20 for savings on the Silver Whinnys.
These are amazing for riding. They take some wrestling to get on, but they will stay on.
Thank you!
