This is interesting stuff http://www.cbc.ca/.../06/november-6-2010/ Not really about icing and recovery per se but does talk about swelling and reasons behind it.
Immune Collateral Damage Immunologists have long been puzzled by "sterile inflammation", which occurs when the immune system responds to an internal injury, such as a muscle sprain, heart attack or stroke, with the same kind of powerful immune response that is used against a bacterial infection. Immune cells flock to the site of the injury and their inappropriate response may aggravate the damage that's already occurred.
Dr. Paul Kubes, the Director of the Snider Institute of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation at the University of Calgary, has been looking for the signals that summon these immune cells when sterile injury occurs. He's found that one of the triggers seems to be fragments of protein from mitochondria released from damaged cells. Dr. Kubes suspects that, to the immune cells, these mitochondrial proteins may look like signs of bacterial infection, and that this may explain the immune system's unfortunate reaction.
Ian