Treat a sprain with RICE: rest, ice, compression, elevation
An old model or guideline was retired in favor of a new one.
TaughtRolled your ankle? RICE. Rest it completely, ice it, compress it, elevate it. Inflammation is the enemy and ice is how you fight it.
NowGabe Mirkin, the doctor who coined RICE in 1978, publicly retracted the rest and ice components in 2015. Current guidance favors early controlled movement and loading, and inflammation is now understood as part of healing rather than something to suppress.
What actually happened
Mirkin published RICE in The Sportsmedicine Book and it became universal, printed in every first-aid manual and taught in every gym class. In 2015 he wrote that both ice and prolonged rest delay healing, and that he no longer recommended them. It is rare and admirable for the originator of a piece of dogma to be the one who kills it.
The mechanism is the reversal. Inflammation is the body dispatching macrophages, which release IGF-1 and clear damaged tissue. Ice constricts blood vessels and blunts that response, and animal and human work suggests it delays muscle regeneration rather than accelerating it. Complete rest weakens tissue, because tendon, ligament, and muscle remodel in response to load.
The acronyms have been iterating since: POLICE (protection, optimal loading, ice, compression, elevation) in 2012, then PEACE and LOVE (protect, elevate, avoid anti-inflammatories, compress, educate; then load, optimism, vascularisation, exercise) published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2019. Ice for pain relief is still fine, it is an analgesic. The evidence base here is not as strong as the confident acronyms imply, which is itself part of the lesson.
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Who was taught this
Still standard through 2015, so anyone who finished school between 1950 and 2015 learned the earlier version.