09/05/2023
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A Guide to Feeling Better & Prioritizing Your Recovery - From Bigger to Smaller Impact
😴Sleep: How does your body feel when you only get a few hours of sleep? I'm guessing not well. Now add poor sleep to when you're trying to recover - even worse! That being said, sleep is highly restorative and helps your body's tissues to heal. If you aren't prioritizing at least 6-8 hours a night, it will prolong your recovery and lead to delayed outcomes. So hit the sack!
🥛Hydration & 🥗 Nutrition: I know you've heard it 100x before, but eating a healthier diet and staying hydrated is key to fueling all the important processes that occur inside the body to enhance the recovery and health of muscle, tendon, ligament, cartilage, and bone. It sounds simple, but it's often neglected or overlooked. Consider boosting your servings of vegetables, fruits, and proteins during your recovery - your body will thank you! That being said, establishing good habits in this area will not only help recovery but optimize your long-term health.
🧠 Mental Health: Not only do anxiety, stress, and depression have an impact on our mind, but they also impact the body's healing as well. In my experience, those who remain optimistic and have a positive outlook on their recovery are more resilient to hiccups in their progress and reach their goals much quicker. If you're consistently struggling in this area, I encourage you to reach out to a mental health professional. My colleagues at Embark Mental Health in Sioux Falls, SD are highly trained to listen and provide strategies to help you in these areas.
🏃Active Treatments: In order to change your body, you need to move your body to give it a new blueprint for how you want it heal. Through exercise, stretching, or strengthening you are making profound impacts on function, motor control, and tolerance to activity. Behind the scenes, there are complex neurocognitive and physiologic processes that your body takes advantage of to heal and restore. If you're struggling to find where to start, a physical therapist, like myself, is trained to help you to determine a starting plan and to navigate your recovery (with graded exposure) to help you get on the right track.
💆♀️Passive Treatments: While massage, manipulations, needling, cupping, taping, percussive theraguns, modalities, and rest have their places at the right time in the recovery process, they shouldn't be the sole strategy for long-term outcomes. Generally, the positive effects of passive treatments are short-term and should be integrated with active interventions to obtain the full benefit. Keep in mind that the treatments listed above will initially help you feel and move better, but use that as an opportunity to utilize that pain-free range of motion!
So if you're struggling with pain and injury, consider the information I've shared to optimize your health. Consider it the 'food pyramid' of injury recovery - now eat up!