Not one paper in 4,846 has “athlete”, “sports” or “muscle soreness” in its title.
115 papers touch pain and musculoskeletal topics in general, and there is real work on inflammation and microcirculation — two studies found cold plasma increased blood flow in intact skin (2016 and 2017, both in Microvascular Research and Microcirculation). Nobody has connected any of it to training, recovery or performance.
Anything at all about athletes. No trial, no observational study, no case series. For a technology people are already using for recovery, the literature is silent.
“Almost five thousand papers and not one is about athletes. That seems mad to me.”
Keep an honest log through a training block. Not evidence — but it's yours, and nobody else has one.
The emptiest space on the map and the easiest to make a case for. A sports science department could run it.
This is an extract. The full picture is in The Open Field — or start at the library index.
Cold Plasma Research Library. Compiled from Europe PMC and ClinicalTrials.gov, September 2026 — 4,846 cold plasma papers, 662 on plasma-activated water, 52 registered trials. Counts are title-restricted and therefore floors, not ceilings: a low number means barely anyone has made this their subject, not that nobody has ever looked.
These pages describe published research on a technology. They do not describe or endorse any product, they are not medical advice, and nothing here should be used to decide about treating a health condition. Speak to a qualified clinician about anything that matters.