Is Latex Attacked By Salt Water Or Anti-Freeze?

Got a few minutes?

Here's the story. I have just started exercising again and find that my knees hurt. A few years ago, when I was jogging, I used to put 1 quart size plastic food storage bags, (three bags put inside each other to prevent leaks and tied off with twine), each filled with two trays of ice and a certain amount of water, and put it on my knees for twenty minutes or so while I lay on the bed watching TV. It was a very convenient treatment, since I was doing what I normally would be doing anyway, watching TV at night.

I first started icing the knees because my knees hurt the next day after jogging. After a few sessions my knees didn't hurt, but I used the ice after jogging anyway as a pro-active way to prevent the knees hurting. This way, I could jog three or four times a week without any pain at any time.

As for the commercial cold pack with the blue goodge inside, forget it. I was warned off it by a book which says it doesn't carry enough cold to be effective, and a few tries on my part confirmed it. There is a range of cold I find very effective, not superfreezing but colder than those stupid blue flexible "cold packs" put out, for sure.

Anyway, the jogging was some years ago and I haven't jogged for years. I have found the need to exercise, and find that even brisk walking or stationary bike causes knee pain. The walking causes pain south of the kneecap, the stationary bike north of the kneecap. Yes, I've put on weight. I really like the stationary bike because it gives me the chance to exercise fairly heavily without putting too much strain on most body joints-except the knee, slightly.

Because the knee pain is at two points, I found it necessary to use the two ice bags with two trays of ice each plus water on each knee. As you can imagine, this gets quite cumbersome. So I decided to try commercial ice bags. The ontly trouble there, indeed the main reason I have not gone to them before now, is the size of the opening to put the ice. The ice cubes in the standard size tray are too large to be poured in conveniently-they must be put in one at a time.

I don't feel like putting in eight trays of ice into ice bags one cube at a time.

Which leads us to a couple of different attempted solutions.

One is smaller ice cubes than the standard tray. Apparently Camco makes smaller trays with smaller cubes for RV's. Even though the ice tray is slightly slimmer than the standard, (4 inches vs 4.5 inches), note the cubes are three across, not two across. Therefore, the cubes will be considerably smaller than the standard.




And Kitchenworks has some trays that make 90 really small cubes, which look fun to try regardless of the icebag situation.


Also, apparently commercial ice makers are available around $200 that will make smaller ice cubes, but that is a lot more than I planned to pay for suitably sized frozen water. It is not so high a price to be ruled out if all else fails, however. And of course, I could invest in a whole new fridge which makes smaller ice cubes, which I would rather not.

The second way around this is to add some sort of anti-freeze agent to the water to prevent freezing, and putting the icebags with resulting solution in the freezer permanently, except when using. The problem with this appproach is that I tried it with the plastic bags, and the resulting bag was too cold to use on the knee.

I feel that can be taken care of one of three ways, (I am open to more suggestions):

A) Take a wet cloth towel and put between the too-cold icebag and the knees. This might work but I kind of like the ice water in the bag and the blood in the knee to be in as close a communion as possible. After all, the body is 97% water. I think something magical happens between the blood near the hurt and swollen area and the ice water when only a thin membrane is separating them.

B) Keep a large container of water/antifreeze combo at room temperature on hand, and before each use empty out a small percentage of the supercold water in each icebag and replace it with a similar amount of room temperature water/antifreeze combo. This won't take long-the screw-on cap in each icebag is very quick to open and close.

C) Take the icebags out and throw into the microwave for a few minutes, just enough to heat them up a little. My guess is that my freezer is probably plus 15º or 20º Fahrenheit, and three minutes should heat the water up 10º, which should be near to where I want it. If not, just a couple of more minutes in the mocrowave should do it. The icebags contain no metal-just latex lined fabric and a plastic opening and screwcap.


My three choices for the anti-freeze agent, which should not be anywhere near 50% of the total solution, are salt, ethylene glycol and propylene glycol. Ethylene glycol is the normal, poisonous car anti-freeze, and propylene glycol is the animal safe anti-freeze. Since the propylene glycol brands seem only minimally more expensive than the poison, I am strongly leaning toward proplylene if choosing between the two.

My problem is that I don't know if salt or either of the glycols attack latex, and the icebag box suggests you don't use anything except water in the bag.

So, does anyone know if salt, ethylene glycol or proplylene glycol attacks latex? Does anyone have a better anti-freeze suggestion, (I thought of alcohol but there is that microwave possbility). Or does anyone have any better ideas on how to get wet cold on my knees?

Suggestions are appreciated.