When most people think about recovering from a sports injury, methods that spring to mind are rest, pain medication and physical therapy. However, there’s a vital recovery component that’s often overlooked, and that component is nutrition. Here are two nutrition tips that can help supercharge your sports injury physical therapy:
1. Get more vitamins and minerals
We’ve all heard how important vitamins and minerals are to our everyday health. Most people will have seen commercials about how more calcium helps prevent osteoporosis. Well, vitamins and minerals become even more important to your body when you’re in sports injury physical therapy, and it’s important that you’re getting enough of them in your diet.
For example, B vitamins are very much involved in the injury recovery process. They’re heavily involved in helping the body break down other vitamins and minerals, and they also play a large role in producing the energy your body requires to heal itself. Even the metabolism of macronutrients like protein, carbs and fats relies on B vitamins. Other vitamins and minerals your body needs to heal faster include vitamin A, vitamin K, vitamin C, copper, magnesium, calcium and potassium to name a few.
2. Eat plenty of protein
With diets like the ketogenic, or keto, diet, protein has recently been taking a backseat to fats and carbs. But, having enough protein in the daily diet is really important when people are doing sports injury physical therapy.
A Harvard Medical School article recommends, for most people, getting 0.36 grams of protein for every pound you weigh. This means that a 200-pound person should be eating 72 grams of protein every day. When you’re injured, this number should go up since protein is vital for the repair of soft tissue, bone and cartilage. In fact, one article states that people recovering from injury should up their protein intake to 0.5 grams per pound of body weight. For our 200-pound person, that means their daily protein intake should go from 72 grams to 100 grams.
SOL Physical Therapy can help you find the best nutrition for sports injury physical therapy
At SOL Physical Therapy, we offer the highest-quality sports injury treatment by using the latest physical therapy techniques. Our team also offers nutrition programs that can help jump-start your healing and help you build a stronger body. In addition to nutrition programs, the personalized treatment plan we create for you may include techniques like:
Take the next step to get our help with your sports injury. Contact our team today for more information or to schedule an initial appointment.
