Can Cryotherapy Help Heal a Concussion? What the Science Says
By:Joy Stephenson-Laws, Holistic Coach, J.D., Founder
Concussions are a type of brain injury. They often happen after a hit to the head in sports, a car accident, or a fall. People with concussions can feel dizzy, tired, foggy, forgetful, or low. Most of the time the advice is to rest and let the brain settle. But people understandably want to know what else might help.
One option that gets a lot of attention is cryotherapy, where you step into a very cold chamber for a few minutes. Some athletes swear by it. So it's a fair question to ask: can it actually help the brain recover after a concussion?
Let me walk you through what the science supports, what it doesn't, and where you should be careful. I'll be honest with you, including about the parts the marketing tends to skip.
What Is Cryotherapy?
Cryotherapy means cold therapy. In whole-body cryotherapy, you stand in a chamber cooled with refrigerated air or liquid nitrogen, often to around -200°F or colder, for about two to four minutes. The idea is that a short, intense cold exposure can calm inflammation, lift mood, and ease sore muscles.
One thing to keep in mind from the start, because it matters for concussion: this cold reaches your skin and the tissue just beneath it. It does not cool your brain. Your skull and the blood-brain barrier protect the brain from that kind of temperature change. Hold onto that point, because it shapes what cryotherapy can and can't realistically do for a head injury.
What Happens in the Brain After a Concussion?
A concussion shakes the brain inside the skull. Even when there's no bleeding and a scan looks normal, brain cells get stressed and chemistry shifts. The body responds by releasing inflammatory signals such as IL-6 and TNF-alpha, the nervous system's balance can get thrown off, and people are left with headaches, fatigue, poor sleep, trouble concentrating, or a low and irritable mood.
These symptoms can last days, weeks, or sometimes months. That's why rest and a gradual return to activity, guided by a clinician, remain the foundation of recovery.
So Where Could Cryotherapy Fit In?
Here's the honest headline: no published studies have tested whole-body cryotherapy in people recovering from a concussion. So anyone who tells you it treats concussions is going beyond the evidence.
What cryotherapy might do is ease some of the symptoms that ride along with a concussion. And because it doesn't cool the brain, any help it offers would be indirect, working on your body and nervous system rather than on the injury itself. Here's where that reasoning is strongest, and where it's weakest.
It May Calm a Revved-Up Nervous System
After a concussion, the autonomic nervous system can get stuck in a wired, on-alert state: racing heart, restless sleep, anxiety. Cold exposure pushes in the opposite direction. A 2013 study found that a single session of cryostimulation increased parasympathetic activity, the "rest and recover" side of the nervous system, measured through heart rate variability. That study was done in healthy, active adults rather than concussion patients, so it's a reasonable basis for hope, not proof. But if cold helps you shift out of fight-or-flight, that's a plausible way it could make recovery more comfortable.
It May Help Sleep and Mood
Sleep and mood take a real hit after a concussion, and both matter for healing. Cold exposure raises norepinephrine, a brain chemical tied to alertness and mood, and a randomized trial found that whole-body cryotherapy, added on top of standard treatment, improved depressive symptoms in adults being treated for depression. That's encouraging for the mood and sleep side of recovery, though again it wasn't studied in concussion specifically.
It May Ease Neck and Headache Tension
This is probably the most down-to-earth benefit. Many concussions come with neck strain or tension headaches, often from the same whiplash motion that jolted the brain. Cold is genuinely useful for muscle and joint discomfort, so if part of what you're feeling is neck and muscle tension, cryotherapy may take the edge off. Notably, sports medicine guidelines already list cold and other physical treatments as reasonable options for concussion-related neck pain and headache.
A Word on Inflammation, Because It Gets Oversold
You'll often read that cryotherapy "reduces inflammation," and from there it's a short hop to "so it must help the inflamed brain." Be careful with that hop. Cold can lower some inflammation markers in the body after hard exercise, but a Cochrane review, the gold standard for weighing evidence, found there isn't even enough good evidence to confirm that whole-body cryotherapy reliably reduces muscle soreness, and it flagged that the safety data are thin. More to the point, lowering inflammation in your skin and muscles is not the same as reaching inflammation inside the brain, which the cold never touches. So treat the inflammation claim as modest and indirect at best.
What the Science Still Doesn't Know, and the Safety Part That Matters
This is the section the wellness ads leave out, so I won't.
Whole-body cryotherapy is not cleared or approved by the FDA for treating any medical condition. In a consumer update, the FDA stated plainly that it does not have evidence the treatment effectively treats the conditions it's marketed for, and that no cryotherapy device has been cleared or approved. The agency also spelled out real risks: frostbite, burns, eye injury, and, in chambers cooled with liquid nitrogen, the danger of oxygen being displaced, which can cause someone to pass out. A spa worker died in a cryotherapy chamber in 2015. These are not reasons to panic, but they are reasons to use a reputable, well-supervised facility and to take the cautions seriously.
Cryotherapy is not for everyone. Skip it, or clear it with your doctor first, if you have heart problems or high blood pressure, poor circulation, Raynaud's, cold sensitivity or reduced skin sensation, or if you're pregnant. And it does not replace rest, medical care, or brain rehabilitation. At most it's a comfort measure alongside the real treatment, not a substitute for it.
When Cryotherapy Might Be Worth a Try
If you or someone you love has a concussion, cryotherapy might be reasonable to consider when all of these are true:
You've seen a doctor and are following their recovery plan
You're past the first few days, so the brain has had its initial rest
Your lingering issues include neck tension, poor sleep, or low mood
You have no health conditions that make cold risky
And always clear it with your clinician first.
Other Gentle Ways to Support Concussion Recovery
Cryotherapy is far from the only tool, and these have steadier evidence behind them:
Sleep: the brain does much of its repair during deep sleep.
Omega-3 fats: found in fish oil, they support brain cell health.
Light exercise: once your clinician okays it, gentle movement helps blood flow to the brain.
Mindfulness or meditation: helps settle an overactive nervous system.
Hydration: water supports brain cells and overall recovery.
Often it's the combination of these basics, more than any single therapy, that moves the needle.
Final Thoughts
Cryotherapy is cold, but it might be a warm helping hand on the road back, mostly by easing the things that make recovery miserable: tense muscles, ragged sleep, a frayed mood, a nervous system stuck on high. What it won't do is heal the concussion itself or cool the injured brain, and it isn't a treatment the evidence or the FDA stands behind for that purpose.
So if you want to try it, do it safely. Work with your doctor, choose a reputable facility, listen to your body, and treat it as one small part of a full recovery plan. Your brain is worth the care, and healing, while it takes time, is absolutely possible.
References
1. Lombardi G, Ziemann E, Banfi G. Whole-body cryotherapy in athletes: from therapy to stimulation. An updated review of the literature. Frontiers in Physiology. 2017;8:258.
2. Hausswirth C, Schaal K, Le Meur Y, Bieuzen F, Filliard JR, Volondat M, Louis J. Parasympathetic activity and blood catecholamine responses following a single partial-body cryostimulation and a whole-body cryostimulation. PLoS One. 2013;8(8):e72658.
3. Costello JT, Baker PRA, Minett GM, Bieuzen F, Stewart IB, Bleakley C. Whole-body cryotherapy (extreme cold air exposure) for preventing and treating muscle soreness after exercise in adults. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2015;(9):CD010789.
4. Rymaszewska J, Lion KM, Pawlik-Sobecka L, Pawłowski T, Szcześniak D, Trypka E, et al. Efficacy of the whole-body cryotherapy as add-on therapy to pharmacological treatment of depression: a randomized controlled trial. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 2020;11:522.
5. Harmon KG, Drezner JA, Gammons M, Guskiewicz KM, Halstead M, Herring SA, et al. American Medical Society for Sports Medicine position statement: concussion in sport. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2013;47(1):15–26.
6. McCrory P, Meeuwisse W, Dvořák J, Aubry M, Bailes J, Broglio S, et al. Consensus statement on concussion in sport—the 5th international conference on concussion in sport held in Berlin, October 2016. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2017;51(11):838–847.
7. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Whole Body Cryotherapy (WBC): A "Cool" Trend That Lacks Evidence, Poses Risks. FDA Consumer Health Information, July 5, 2016. (Original fda.gov page retired; full text reproduced at https://www.drugs.com/fda-consumer/whole-body-cryotherapy-wbc-a-cool-trend-that-lacks-evidence-poses-risks-365.html)
This article is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. If you're considering cryotherapy, please talk with a qualified healthcare provider, especially if you have any heart, circulation, or other health conditions.