Cooling Solutions for Equine Legs: Evaluating Horse Ice Boots vs. Incrediwear Socks
Ensuring the health and performance of horses legs is paramount to keeping a sound horse. Cooling therapy is a widely used method to aid in post-exercise recovery and injury management. Among the array of cooling solutions available, horse ice boots and Incrediwear socks have gained popularity for their purported efficacy and ease of use. In this blog, we’ll delve into the science behind both methods to determine their effectiveness in cooling horses’ legs.
Why do we need to cool horses legs?
Horses have a high metabolic capacity combined with a small surface area for dissipation of heat. When horses exercise about 20% of the metabolism in the muscle cells is used for work and the remaining 80% becomes heat. Skin blood flow increases during internal body heating transferring the heat from body core to the surface of the skin and if vasodilatation is not sufficient sweating starts.
To maintain a normal body temperature range, the horse uses four heat transfer mechanisms, thermal radiation, conduction, convection, and evaporation
Understanding Cooling Therapy for horses:
Effective cooling therapy involves reducing inflammation, constricting blood vessels, and providing pain relief to promote healing and maintain leg health in horses. The chosen cooling boots for horses should ideally mean the surface skin temperatures are below 10°C. In humans optimal internal tissue temps between 15-19℃ degrees have been found to be therapeutically optimal. Subcutaneous and deep tissue temperatures will be significantly warmer than the skin surface temperature. Kaneps published a study looking at Tissue Temperature Response to Hot and Cold Therapy in the Metacarpal Region of a Horse. In this study skin temperatures needed to be below 10℃ to have the deep tissue temperatures in the therapeutic range. The aim in this test was to get skin surface temperatures below 10℃ .
How do Horse Ice Boots work:
Conductive heat transfer is the method used to cool the legs with horse ice boots, the cooling horse boots are significantly cooler than body temperature, so the heat passes into the ice boots. Having a good compression sleeve will create better contact and draw more heat out.
The efficacy of horse ice boots lies in their ability to apply the coldest temperatures to the leg meaning there is a significant drop in leg temperatures including internal tissues. By using ice boots for horses it is thought that this significant temperature drop may aid recovery and help prevent injury through modifying the inflammatory response. Additionally, the compression provided by some horse ice boots aids in minimizing swelling and helps to drive in the cold to the soft tissues.
How do Incrediwear Socks work?
Incrediwear socks represent a newer approach to cooling therapy for equine legs. These socks are embedded with Carbon and Germanium. When the fabric is dry, it supposedly supports blood flow and lymphatic drainage. When water is added, apparently the negative ions are activated even more intensely. As a result, heat is kicked out of the deep tissue, providing an icing effect. This is reported to reduce inflammation for recovery and prevention of injury. Use dry, or wet them for a cold therapy, ‘icing’ effect.
- The hotter the water, the more intense the icing effect
- Outside air temperatures needs to be 16 ° Celsius or hotter (in our experiments the ambient was 17 °C)
Passive Recovery – Put the Circulation Hoof Socks on horse’s legs after working, training, or competition.
Cold Therapy – Simply wet Circulation Hoof Socks and ring out excess water. Cold therapy effectiveness will remain for 45 min up to 1 hour to reduce swelling. For maximum effectiveness, place in hot water for 2 minutes , rinse out excess water , wait a minute for hoof socks to cool down before applying.
Incrediwear Equine Circulation Hoof Socks are not based on compression they are quite loose on the leg, seemingly they have a negative ion technology that produces their effects.
Comparative Efficacy Ice boots versus Incrediwear:
When comparing horse ice boots and Incrediwear socks for cooling horses’ legs, we used the following technology to test.
- In our tests we cannot use invasive technology to test the temperature of the internal tendon or tissues. The tests use temperature probes on the surface of the skin to monitor skin temperature.
- Thermal imaging has also been used, this takes a picture of the horses leg to look at the surface temperatures and how even the temperatures are, where was hot and where was cold. All physical objects subjected to a temperature above absolute zero (− 273 °C) emit thermal radiation which can be visualized with an infrared camera.
- Temperatures were logged over the time period to see how the skin surface temperatures change.
Conclusion:
Skin surface temperatures started at 28, and 29°C for the Incrediwear leg and the Cryochaps leg respectively. The leg was then wet for Cryochaps application taking the leg to 22 °C. The temperature log started recording when the leg was already wet.
From the temperature logs below, Incrediwear dropped the leg from 29°C to around 20°C over 24 mins and then continued to hold this temperature for another 7 mins until it was removed. Leg temperatures continued to steadily rise until recording was stopped, 8 mins later. The leg felt cool probably due to it being damp from the wet Incrediwear sock.
The Ice boot for horse’s leg test, started off at 22°C as the leg was wet and evaporation had already started to cool the skin. As soon as the ice and compression boot for horses was applied a very rapid drop of 16 °C was seen and the lowest temp recorded was 3.7°C.
These finding show that the ice boot for horses created maximum cooling and certainly maintained the leg under 10 °C for 10 mins. The Incrediwear slowly cooled the leg via evaporation. It was interesting to note that on removal the thermal image camera showed very similar temperatures to the temperature data logger, pictures below. 6.7°C for the ice wrap for horses and 20.6°C for Incrediwear.
We have for completeness also included the external temperatures with the thermal imager whilst the products are still on the leg. They showed 19°C for Incrediwear and 6°C for Cryochaps.
Ultimately, the choice between horse ice boots and Incrediwear socks depends on individual preferences. Are you looking to cool the leg to create an anti-inflammatory response or do you just want leg temperatures reduced to some degree. Wetting the leg created a reduction in leg temperatures as well, maintaining a wet product on the leg however will extend the evaporation time and extend the cooling. Or you could just continue wetting the leg to get the same effect?