Eating a healthy diet is important at all times, but it can be especially helpful if you are currently working with a physical therapist to recover after an injury or surgery. Conversely, a poor diet can make it harder for you to achieve your desired PT outcomes, so it’s really important that you pay close consideration to your dietary choices while you’re pursuing physical therapy. In today’s blog, we explain why getting proper nutrition is so important if you’re attending physical therapy sessions.
How Nutrition Fuels Recovery
Consuming a healthy diet is vital as you are working to recover with the help of a physical therapy program. Your body gets essential nutrients that aid in the tissue recovery process from the foods you eat, so you’ll want to make sure you’re eating plenty of nutrient dense foods. Leafy green vegetables, lean proteins, whole grains and vitamin packed fruits are great ways to supply your body with Vitamin D, Vitamin B, calcium, iron and more.
On the flip side, if you eat a poor diet, your body doesn’t have access to the nutrients it needs to fuel recovery processes. But that’s not all. Certain foods like sugary options or carbohydrate-dense snacks are pro-inflammatory, meaning that it can trigger a minor inflammatory response inside your body. This inflammation can end up slowing down your body’s ability to perform tissue repair processes, which in turn prolongs your recovery. So not only can a good diet help to speed up recovery, a poor diet and end up delaying your recovery.
When it comes to proper nutrition during your physical therapy recovery, know that it’s not just about the foods you put in your body, it’s also about how you’re hydrating. Staying hydrated is incredibly helpful for your recovering body. When you’re hydrated, blood vessels will remain wide open, making it easier for the essential nutrients you are consuming through your diet to make their way to key muscles and tissues. If you’re dehydrated, blood vessels will constrict, making it harder for oxygen-rich blood to get to recovering tissues, which also increases their risk of additional injury or muscle cramps.
Being hydrated before and after a physical therapy session can also help with inflammation control. Healthy blood flow can calm inflammation and make it easier for your body to flush out toxins and waste products that are byproducts of physical activity. We’re not saying that proper hydration can shave weeks off your recovery timeline, but proper diet and hydration can certainly help provide the right environment for healing to take place, which can speed up the recovery process.
Our team of physical therapists would be more than happy to discuss diet and nutritional plans with you during one of your physical therapy sessions. We want all our clients to be able to make strong recoveries after an injury or surgery, and we know that this is easier when patients are making positive choices in other aspects of their life. Don’t be surprised if nutrition, sleep health and stress management are topics that are covered during your time with your PT, as they all can impact the success of your recovery.
If you are interested in improving your diet to get the most out of your physical therapy sessions, or you want more information about any of the topics we discussed above, connect with the team at OrthoRehab Specialists. For more information or to set up a PT session, give our team a call today at (612) 339-2041.
PT of Costa Rican National Soccer Team for 2007 World Cup in Victoria, CAN. Clinical Instructor for University of Minnesota Doctor of Physical Therapy Affiliations
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