Optimal Nutrition for Injury Recovery

By Lyle McDonald

When it comes to being highly active, there are two types of people: those who have been injured or those who haven't gotten injured yet. These injuries can range from the minor (muscular pulls) to far greater (ligament sprains or worse). That's on top of the injuries that occur just being a human on this planet. In addition to the role of proper rehab, optimizing nutrition has been found to improve overall recovery. And for reasons I will explain below, I am happy to have written a new book on the topic of Optimal Nutrition for Injury Recovery.

While this was always a topic I kind of kept semi-up to date upon, the impetus for writing an actual booklet on the topic was driven by two things. The first was a massive injury I sustained in Februrary of this year where I broke my fibula and tore two ligaments in my lower leg, necessitating major surgery. I'm only 5 months through what will be a year recovery at this point but, hey, it's an excuse to skip leg day for a while. The second was that, I couldn't find a single book on the topic that had been written since 1994 or so. Sure, there was some stuff online but none of it was comprehensive or detailed enough for me.

Determined to optimize my own recovery, I was driven to delve into the research on the topic and figured I might as well write it up as a quick side project while the women's book is still being written. Hey, I've got hospital bills to pay.

This is the result of that research. In it I examine the basics of muscle, tendon, ligament and bone along with the types of injuries that can occur to them (injuries to other tissues such as head trauma are not discussed). This leads into a discussion of various types of injuries and their consequences and I look briefly at the use of PRICES (Protection, Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation, Support) and anti-inflammatory drugs along with some of the controversy surrounding them.

Primarily the book focuses on how nutrition integrates with the various stages of the recovery process. This includes detailed discussions of inflammatory modulating compounds, calorie intake, macro (and briefly, micro nutrient intake). I also look at supporting supplements that may be useful either in general or for specific types of tissue injuries. There is also a brief (I mean brief) discussion of drugs that have been studied or may help the recovery processes. Did I mention that this is brief?

While not a book dedicated to the role of exercise and rehab, I do look a little bit at the issue, both in terms of early mobilization and active recovery. Primarily my focus is on how different aspects of nutrition integrate with activity since I cannot possibly lay out rehab progressions for every injury.

Finally I'll show how it all fits together along with two hypothetical case studies. The first is just a plain-jane minor muscle pull and the second is my own recovery (still ongoing from my injury). I've provided selected references for those who want to delve deeper.

In it I will discuss how to optimize nutrition for recovery from bone, ligament, tendon and muscular injuries. Topics include modulating inflammation, macronutrient and calorie intake along with information on supplements and drugs that can enhance the healing process. A brief section on activity following an injury will show how to integrate recovery activities with nutrition to enhance the effect of both. I also address some of the current controversy surrounding PRICES (Protection, Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation and Support) and the use of anti-inflammatory medications. The book contains two case studies, including my own experience, to show how all of the information fits together.

Since injuries are part and parcel of being active, this book will give you all the nutrition information that you will need to bounce back as quickly as possible if you are injured.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lyle McDonald
• Release date: Jul 21, 2017

Book preview

Optimal Nutrition for Injury Recovery

By Lyle McDonald

This book is not intended for the treatment or prevention of disease, nor as a substitute for medical treatment, nor as an alternative to medical advice. It is a review of scientific evidence presented for information purposes only. Use of the guidelines herein is at the sole choice and risk of the reader.

Copyright: © 2017 by Lyle McDonald. All rights reserved.

This book or any part thereof, may not be reproduced or recorded in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

For information contact:

Lyle McDonald Publishing

1200 Hatteras Drive

Austin, Tx 78753

Email: [e-mail]

FIRST EDITION

FIRST PRINTING

Acknowledgments

I want to give special acknowledgements to two people who gave me invaluable personal expert feedback about my own recovery and personal rehab. In no order of importance this includes Dr. Jonathon Heger, PT, DPT, CSCS along with Sydney physiotherapist Tim Rowland.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: MUSCLE, TENDON, BONE AND LIGAMENT INJURY

CHAPTER 2: STAGES OF INURY RECOVERY

CHAPTER 3: PRICES AND ANTI-INFLAMMATORIES

CHAPTER 4: MODULATING INFLAMMATION

CHAPTER 5: CALORIE INTAKE

CHAPTER 6: MACRONUTRIENT INTAKE

CHAPTER 7: SUPPORTING SUPPLEMENTS

CHAPTER 8: DRUGS

CHAPTER 9: ACTIVITY AND INJURY RECOVERY

CASE STUDY 1: MINOR MUSCULAR INJURY

CASE STUDY 2: MAJOR INJURY

REFERENCES

INTRODUCTION

It's often the case that people become interested in a given topic due to personal need. Psychiatrists are often the craziest of all and are trying to fix themselves. Personal trainers and dietitians were often overweight or too skinny and got into their field to fix themselves, too. If you want to find someone who is an expert on the treatment of low back pain, find someone who has suffered from low back pain for years. If you want to find an expert on kidney function, find someone who has been on dialysis. I think you get the idea.

My career was certainly driven by this, I was chubby as a kid which has driven a perennial interest in fat loss and my own athletic goals (and generally mediocre ability) drove a lifelong interest in training, nutrition and supplementation to improve it. I just got lucky enough to make a living from it.

But this book(let) is even an extension of that. On February 10th of 2017, I was roller skating with friends when someone bumped into me. My skate stuck to the floor and I fell sideways.

And my left leg exploded.

After a visit to the ER and 3 long days of pain and a foot swollen up to the size of a small cantaloupe over the weekend, I would see an orthopedist and be told that I had completely broken my fibula (a small bone on the outside of the lower leg) and torn two ligaments in the process.

I had surgery 3 days later with a plate and pins put into the fibula to cast the break, two cross pins cross pin to hold it close enough to the tibia (the larger bone in the lower leg) so that the ligaments could reattach and begin a healing process that can take up to a year to fully complete.

Due to the nature of my career, I already had a passing familiarity with various nutritional and supplemental approaches to injury healing but my own personal experience would throw me deep into that research in an attempt to both optimize and hasten my recovery. To my surprise, outside of a much older (1994) book, little had been written in book form about the topic. Certainly there was a lot research papers and I would draw on them in developing my strategy to the problem.

This booklet is the result of that. In it I will examine the very basics of a few specific types of injury along with what research says is the best way to support the healing process. I'll discuss nutrition, supplements, mention activity and talk about the potential for certain drugs to improve healing.

CHAPTER 1: MUSCLE, TENDON, BONE AND LIGAMENT INJURY

I have to imagine that most readers could roughly define what an injury is and here I'll use the term to refer to some sort of damage or harm to a part of the body that causes a decrease in function. In some cases, an injury or the decrease in function is very minor and in others they can be extreme or even life threatening.

Let me make it clear up front that I will only be addressing injury to four specific parts of the body in this book: muscle, tendon, bone and ligament. Clearly other parts of the body can be injured, and often very severely but those are not my area of interest, expertise or focus. So let me look at those four briefly so that everyone reading this is on the same page informationally.

Muscle

I imagine everyone knows what a muscle is. There are hundreds in the body and the ones of relevance to this book are the skeletal muscles. These are the ones that control movements such as walking or bending the arm or carrying groceries or what have you. Muscles are made of hundreds or thousands of individual fibers that contract, generating force and causing movement. Muscle also contains a large amount of water, minerals, cellular structures, stored carbohydrate and fat as well.

Muscle injuries can range from fairly minor (the soreness following a heavy workout is, in a sense, muscle injury) to major with the most common being called a strain (popularly called a muscle pull). This occurs when the muscle is overstretched, usually when it is generating force, which causes it to be torn to some degree. This can represent a small tear, requiring a few days to heal or, in extreme cases, result in a complete rupture of the muscle that may require surgery to repair and take an extended period of time to fully heal.

Tendon

Tendons are a dense type of connective tissue that connect muscle to bone. They are found at each end of the muscle where they attach to the muscle at what is called the Musculotendinous Junction. Here the muscle fibers start to become intertwined with the tissue of the tendon which ultimately attaches to the bone. The opposite end of the tendon attaches to the bone at what is called the Osteotendinous junction (osteo means bone) and this is what allows muscular contraction to exert force on that bone to generate movement.

Tendon can become