Yeah I never understood the theory behind why you would ice something.. It'd just reduce bloodflow via vasoconstriction which seems like the opposite of what you'd want unless you had a specific reason to the contrary. Same with anti-inflammatories, unless it's completely out of control then both the inflammation and the resultant pain are doing a job for you (telling you to stay off it and doing repair work.)
I hope this research continues until it's conclusive one way or the other and if it's the opposite of what I (and that paper) suggest then we should have a good explanation for that.
Note that this is focused on chronic treatment. It doesn’t seem to be saying that if you have an injury you shouldn’t ice it at the time if only to decrease pain.
I apply the same logic even to painkillers which aren't anti-inflammatories like paracetamol. I figure that there could be lots about healing mechanisms that we don't know yet where interrupting the feedback of pain might interfere with healing.
That's not to say I don't take painkillers, but that I think a lot about the tradeoffs before I take one. For instance, I didn't take any to relieve vaccination symptoms even though that was the standard advice by the healthcare provider as I figured why would I want to interrupt my bodies response to a pathogen at the precise time it's learning to combat it? (There are some studies that suggest this is true, although the scale of it is a little fuzzy).
What usually tips the balance for me to take a mild painkiller is if the pain is bad enough to genuinely stop me sleeping, in that case I'm buying the healing mechanism that sleep provides.
The CDC recommends that antipyretic or analgesic medications (ibuprofen, tylenol, etc) should not be taken with the Covid vaccine, at least not before or immediately after. This is because the fever and inflammation response are specifically triggers that recruit your immune system into creating the necessary antibodies.
I hope this research continues until it's conclusive one way or the other and if it's the opposite of what I (and that paper) suggest then we should have a good explanation for that.