It is widely accepted that maintaining a normal sleep pattern is critical to ongoing health as well as physical and mental recovery. Abnormal or interrupted sleep patterns are detrimental to school or job performance, mood, and healing from injuries, therefore establishing and maintaining healthy amounts of sleep is very important.

Several studies have shown that lower temperatures can lead to improved sleep and Time magazine has even highlighted head cooling as a potential treatment for insomnia.

In 1984, Diamond and Freitag found that there was an overall 63% decrease in headache pain by using ice gel packs. In fact, 71% reported they would use a gel pack in the future. In 1989, Robbins found that over 65% of patients found cold packs to be from mildly to completely effective in relieving headaches. A 2013 study showed that the application of a frozen neck wrap at the onset of migraine pain was helpful in reducing pain for 77% of the study participants.

Why it works is tough to say. Some feel it may be due to the constriction and then dilation of blood vessels while others have different theories. The bottom line, though, is that many find a benefit to icing their head and/or neck when they suffer from migraine and the best part is there are no known negative side effects.

It is well known that overheating can cause negative effects to athletic performance as well as serious health conditions. From minor effects such as mental fatigue and lowered focus to serious conditions such as exertional heat stroke, heat is the enemy of athletes at all levels. Furthermore, several studies have been able to actually measure reductions in power and time to exhaustion when exercising in the heat. Fortunately you can give yourself an advantage by icing your head and neck!

By cooling the head and neck before and during exercise you can reduce the strain that heat puts on your body and actually improve your performance. Studies have shown more than 13% improvement in exercise time to fatigue by using head cooling methods. Other studies have shown measurable improvements in power output from head and neck cooling by an athlete when competing in the heat vs. not cooling.

Core and brain temperature are naturally elevated after exertion or injury and normalizing that temperature is an important aspect of recovery. External cooling applied to the head and neck can be effective at lowering brain temperature by small amounts and these reductions in temperature have a positive impact on healing.

Researchers in New Zealand have shown that head and neck cooling is effective in managing clinical symptoms after suffering a sports related concussion.

Using ice on your head and neck to reduce migraine pain has been a commonly accepted practice for decades and many people respond very well to cold therapy for migraines and other headache disorders.

Accidents happen in sports and in everyday life. Icing your head can soothe the pain from minor bumps and bruises and there are very few convenient ways to ice your entire head and neck at once for longer periods of time.

An accumulation of small head impacts over time can have similar negative effects on brain health to one large impact and preliminary studies show that cooling can help to minimize these effects.

Hospitals utilize selective hypothermia to minimize brain damage after cardiac arrest, stroke, and severe head trauma.