Why treating the surface isn’t enough

Most of us have been taught to think about skin health from the outside in. When eczema flares, the instinct is to reach for something to apply — a cream, an ointment, a remedy for the surface of the skin.

There are many options in this space — emollients, natural oils, dietary changes — and some are genuinely helpful. But for people with persistent, active eczema that keeps returning despite everything they’ve tried, something important is often being missed.

Cryotherapy doesn’t work on the surface of the skin. It works from the inside out — triggering a powerful natural response in the body’s immune and inflammatory systems that can change how the skin behaves, not just how it looks in the moment.

How cryotherapy works on the immune system and skin

When your body is exposed to extreme cold — the temperature inside our cryo chamber at Aim Health reaches minus 87 degrees Celsius — something remarkable happens at a physiological level.

Blood vessels constrict rapidly. The body enters what researchers describe as a repair mode. And critically for inflammatory skin conditions, the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines — the chemical messengers that drive the immune overreaction behind eczema — is significantly reduced.

This is not a surface effect. It is a systemic one. The cold exposure triggers a whole-body response that affects the immune environment throughout the body, not just at the skin’s surface.

When you step out of the chamber, oxygenated blood floods back through the body. Endorphins are released. The anti-inflammatory cascade begins. And for people with eczema, what many notice first — often within hours of their first session — is something they haven’t felt in a long time: their skin feels calmer. The itch quietens.

With regular sessions, this effect builds. The intervals between flares lengthen. When flares do come, they tend to be less intense and settle faster.

What the research says

The evidence base for cryotherapy in inflammatory skin conditions is growing. Research has shown that whole body cryotherapy reduces the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines — including the specific immune signals that are elevated in eczema — while simultaneously triggering the body’s natural anti-inflammatory responses.

Studies have found that cryotherapy may help ease itching in patients with mild to moderate eczema, with the cold exposure reducing the nerve sensitisation that makes eczema skin so reactive. For psoriasis — which shares the autoimmune inflammatory mechanism with severe eczema — studies show reductions in inflammatory markers and symptom severity with regular cryotherapy.

This is an emerging area of research, and we present it honestly as such. What we can say is that the biological mechanism is well understood, the clinical signals are positive, and the experience of our clients at Aim Health is consistently encouraging.