Why should I precool a cryotherapy machine before a session?

Cryotherapy session length and the temperature inside a cryosauna are crucial elements of the treatment protocol. That is why it is essential to carry out cold sessions at a temperature between -130°C and -150°C for 2 to 3 minutes. These recommendations were repeatedly confirmed by numerous studies, and recent research published in the Journal of Physical Medicine reinforces them further.

An operator has to keep in mind a whole range of factors to select the most effective treatment protocol while ensuring a patient’s comfort inside the cabin with a chilling atmosphere. In this respect, air temperature and humidity in the session room play a role, too. So make sure to look through your cryosauna manual once again to refresh the recommended values in your memory. 

For an efficient treatment, the temperature inside the cabin should reach the preset value within the shortest time, so pre-cooling is vital. Otherwise, the air-nitrogen mix fed into a cryosauna will have to cool not only the patient’s body but also the cabin walls. In this case, the patient’s body cools slower, and the session feels less comfortable due to frequent blasts of cold air. In addition, there may be a 15-20% difference between the displayed air-nitrogen mix temperature and the actual temperature inside a chamber. 

For this reason, pre-cooling became automatic in many modern cryotherapy machines. Another way to deal with this issue and make the most of the treatment is scheduling cryotherapy sessions one after another with no more than 10 to 15 minutes in between. Thus you can save liquid nitrogen without pre-cooling a cryosauna for each patient. To encourage scheduled sessions over walk-ins, you can offer different prices for pre-booked treatments and individual sessions. The price gap may be as big as 20-25% to motivate your customers to schedule their appointments in advance.