Neil Livemore
Oct 31, 20202 min
Updated: Jun 4, 2023
Our expert consultants specialise in nutrition and exercise rehabilitation for bone, ligament, tendon, and muscle.
Musculoskeletal injuries can set us back months and poor strategies can prolong the rehabilitation and healing timeline further.
How can we support muscle, tendon/ligament, or bone Injury healing, or more importantly, minimise adverse outcomes?
Here are some sports nutrition and rehabilitation nutrition considerations below:
Typical goals during healing usually consist of:
Support for optimal healing of a specific tissue.
Minimise lean tissue breakdown of the injured limb.
Maintain overall lean mass (minimise lean tissue wasting).
Maintain body fat within ideal ranges for health, recovery (and performance aligned to goals).
Minimise detraining.
Support healing and enhance return to daily living/return to sport timeline.
Energy demands
Overall calories should be matched for correct energy needs and energy availability to support healing without excessive increases in body fat or losing important lean mass, suppressing physiological functions and negatively impacting other potential goals from your support team (e.g. building/strengthening in other non-injured areas etc.).
Deceiving energy needs.
Reductions in exercise/training may cause lower energy demands, however – the healing process increases metabolic demands and walking aids such as crutches, or a boot will further increase that number. Additional goals, such as increasing mass may also increase recommendations.
Primary Nutrients
Avoiding deficiencies of micronutrients to allow for healthy functioning/tissue repair of the body.
Adjust fuelling to support varying daily demands through the injury continuum – different phases of healing, differing daily demands during rehab and adjustments during critical milestones of return to performance will cause much more complexity in the correct fuels.
Adequate protein targets (increases are likely needed depending on start point) to aid tissue retention and combat the anabolic resistance of limb immobilisation.
Potential Supplements
Evidence driven lab-tested supplements to support healing and additional goals
Monitoring,
Highly dependent on tools available, weight, skinfolds, girths to view a timeline of progress.
How can we help?
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