Ice or Heat which to use?

This is a question I get weekly, so I figured I could put it here and hopefully it would help others searching for an answer. You can usually never go wrong with applying Ice to a painful spot. Think of it this way if you get a bee sting or a lump, you put ice on it right? of course, so if you just hurt it then please ice it. Okay that was the easy one. Now lets say you have a new injury and there is slight swelling involved, you would want to start off with ten minutes of ice, then take it off for a half hour then do another ten minutes of ice. Wait several hours then reapply with the ice in the same way. Now if it feels like a pulled muscle then a good thing to do is to apply ice for ten minutes, moist heat for ten minutes, then ice again for ten minutes. Wait several hours then repeat. Generally you can't go wrong with ice, be careful with heat, it can feel good while applied and cause lots of problems after, so use with caution. Heat can be like throwing gas on an already burning fire. I hope this helps someone in a pinch that is unsure what to do.