Athletes and hobbyists encounter intense challenges from injuries. Severe injuries can sideline a person for good, and minor incidents are nuisances that take people away from the sports they love.
Too often, injured people fail to care for their injuries, elongating the time they’re hurt and sometimes making things worse. However, proper care for a broken limb, torn ligament, or sprained ankle can significantly affect recovery time.
Controlling inflammation is one of the key factors in sports injury recovery. Fast treatment and appropriate rest help the body recover faster and get people back into sports.
If you or someone you know is hurt from a sports injury, here are some tips to help you recover.
Seek Medical Attention
The right medical care is essential to injury recovery. Especially as people age, they need to get professional medical attention to
Resting Your Injury
Rest is probably the best thing you can do for any injury after seeing the doctor. Even in cases where surgery is necessary, the rest period after medical procedures is critical. You must allow your body enough time to heal.
Unfortunately, many people don’t rest enough. They either try to ignore the injury because they’d rather be playing sports, or they aren’t in tune with their bodies.
If you try to play hurt or return to activity earlier than you should, you open yourself to re-injury. Frequently, people with minor injuries turn their problems into significant issues when they play hurt. That sprained ligament or tendon will tear, and you’ll be seeing a doctor to schedule a surgery that you should have avoided.
Get rest, and don’t play injured.
Lose Extra Weight to Reduce Recovery Time
Shedding excess weight can help avoid injuries and hasten recovery. When you’re overweight, your body’s under increased stress all day. As a result, your joints and bones are weaker. Being overweight also means you’re less mobile and are at greater risk of other injuries.
Heavier people typically struggle with physical therapy because they move around with more weight. Their stability and mobility suffer.
If you want a fast recovery from your sports injury, pay close attention to your diet, especially if the injury means you aren’t burning as many calories.
Eat a healthier diet that’s higher in protein, leaving you feeling full longer. Make sure you’re taking vitamins and drinking plenty of water.
Controlling Inflammation
Inflammation is one of the most significant challenges to a fast recovery. Inflammation is the body’s natural immune response to injury. When something breaks or tears, your body rallies resources to the affected area to stop bleeding, form new skin, and deliver protection.
However, too much inflammation hinders natural healing , so keeping it under control is vital to rapid recovery. Here are some ways to keep inflation in check:
Rest – We’ve already mentioned resting to avoid re-injury. However, rest also prevents over-inflammation in a wound or sprain. When you’re first injured, keep activity levels low, so your body will be less likely to trigger as much inflammation. In addition, get more sleep to help your body recover.
Ice the Area – Ice is another effective way to reduce inflammation. Depending on the injury, icing the area every 30 minutes to an hour is helpful. Of course, talk to a doctor about more severe injuries about what you should do.
Increase Antioxidants – Inflammation is typically the result of oxidative stress in the body. If you want to control inflammation, you should increase your antioxidant intake to control free radicals in the body to reduce oxidative stress.
Antioxidants, luckily, are found in many everyday foods like berries, nuts, fish, and vegetables. Eating a healthy diet or taking supplements can help reduce inflammation.
Compress the Wound – Compression controls inflammation by limiting how much the injured area can swell. Thankfully, compression is easy enough for anyone to do. All you need is a bandage wrap or some other way to keep swelling down and prevent the injury from swelling up. This allows faster healing and will speed your recovery.
Hiring a Physical Therapist
Working with a professional physical therapist is one of the best ways to recover from any injury. Gone are the days when you’re supposed to rest for months after surgery.
While it’s true you should limit activity and follow your doctor’s advice, medical professionals often want their patients moving around to prevent muscle shrinkage. A physical therapist knows how to avoid over-stressing your injury. Instead, they work with clients to build supportive muscles around wounds that increase stability and get people back on the court or field faster.
Most areas have physical therapists that see clients once or twice a week, depending on the injury and timeline. Call a therapy clinic in your area to learn more about the process.
Peptides & Sports Injury Recovery
Peptides are short chains of amino acids that trigger specific biological responses in the body. For decades, scientists have researched peptides and how they can benefit people everywhere. One peptide, BPC-157, is made of 15 amino acids that are a partial sequence of the Body Protection Compound (BPC).
In research, BPC-157 has been shown in rodent models to accelerate the healing of wounds, including challenging tendon-to-bone injuries. It also protected organs and prevented gastric ulcers.
It does this by increasing type 1 collagen in impacted tissues, speeding the rate at which a new tendon or ligament is formed. BPC-157 also increased blood flow to the injured area and aided skin burns in subjects.
