Paris, France - The Paris Olympics have been a showcase not only for athletic prowess but also for therapies such as ice baths and osteopathy which have little scientifically proven medical value, according to experts.

The Olympics have long been a fertile ground for questionable medical treatments, as athletes seek out every way possible to improve their performance and tamp down their pain.

"In sport, there is a lot of propaganda for all kinds of 'alternative medicine' – there is a lot of demand from athletes," French neurologist and pain specialist Didier Bouhassira said.

At the Rio Games eight years ago, "cupping" was the latest pseudoscientific fad.

Though praised at the time by athletes such as US Olympic swimming great Michael Phelps, there is little scientific evidence that applying heated cups to the skin has any more benefit than a placebo.

For this year's Games, ice has been all the rage.

Cryotherapy – which includes cold-water swimming, ice baths, and more advanced cooling chambers – is touted to help athletes recover after vigorous exercise.

According to a recent editorial published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the federations taking part in the Paris Games together requested more than 16,000 tons of ice – at a cost of $2.7 million.

No vendor was able to supply such a massive amount of ice, so the Olympics will have to make do with 650 tons, the editorial said. That is still 10 times more than was required at the Tokyo Games only three years ago.

The editorial's authors criticized the routine use of cryotherapy for athletes between training sessions.

While ice baths can treat some conditions, such as heat stroke, athletes often use it "to obtain benefits which are not evidence-based," they wrote.

"Ice could have the opposite effect to that expected such as delayed tissue regeneration or impaired recovery."

The authors also stressed the environmental impact of producing, transporting, and storing such vast amounts of ice.

Another alternative medicine sought out by athletes – osteopathy, which is similar to chiropractic work in the US – is no newcomer to the Olympics.

Osteopaths are on the staff of federations and integrated into the teams at the official Olympic clinic which monitors athletes daily.

But osteopathy, which promises to restore health through manipulations of the body, has little scientific basis and its effectiveness remains hotly contested.

Studies with rigorous methodology have found that broad swathes of the discipline -- such as "cranial" or "visceral" osteopathy – simply have no effect.

Other osteopathic manipulations, which are closer to those done by physiotherapists, appear to have no particular advantage over conventional, evidence-based physiotherapy.

A randomized clinical trial published in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2021 compared the effect of osteopathic manipulations with "sham" treatments such as light touching in 400 patients with back pain.

The difference between the two was "likely not clinically meaningful," the study said.

Osteopaths offer athletes a feeling of "well-being without curative properties," said Pascale Mathieu, president of France's council of physiotherapists.