Habituation to the perception of the qualities of cold-induced pain

Abstract

This study was conducted in order to measure the reported pain caused by cold immersions over a 5-day period to determine if habituation to the perception of cold pain occurs. Numerous authors have described a habituation phenomenon to therapeutic ice bath immersions. Athletic trainers often explain to athletes that their perceptions of the pain induced by a therapeutic ice bath will decrease each day as they proceed through therapy. Essentially, it is assumed that there is a habituation to the perception of cold-induced pain shortly after initiation of the treatment regime. The subjects were 22 male and female college students who had limited experience with cold immersion. The subjects' right feet and ankles were immersed in an ice bath for 21 minutes on 5 consecutive days followed by a 21-minute recovery period. The McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) was used to measure pain during the immersions. Sensory, affective, evaluative, and miscellaneous qualities of pain were determined from the MPQ. During the testing session, each subject completed the MPQ 30 seconds following immersion and then every 3 minutes until completion of the test. Repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVAs) adjusted according to the Bonferroni correction revealed no significant differences for any of the qualities of pain over a 5-day period. The subjects' perception of cold-induced pain did appear to decrease during the immersion and there was a trend towards decreasing pain during day five, but a habituation effect was not documented in this study.