Many athletes and weekend warriors experience joint pain or injury due to their active lifestyles. Nutrition is necessary for an athlete to perform well and stay healthy. Sports injuries can take a long time to heal, but certain foods may help your body recover. A healthy diet can heal your muscles and joints faster and help you return to your sport quickly.
Focus on increasing your micronutrients and antioxidants. A healthy diet provides extra energy while your body works harder to heal itself. No matter what kind of diet you follow, there are so many nutritious and tasty foods that you can eat to help your muscles and joints repair.
Promote Healing with these Foods:
Vegetables: There are many nutrients, including potassium and vitamin A, that are contained in starchy vegetables such as sweet potatoes, squash, and pumpkin. Starchy vegetables carry strong anti-inflammatory properties. Cruciferous veggies like broccoli, cabbage, and brussel sprouts, block enzymes that result in swelling of the joints easing pain and stiffness.1
Protein: Muscle tissue requires protein, which is an essential building block. Moreover, a diet rich in lean proteins can help prevent inflammation from increasing. Incorporate protein-rich foods such as lean meat, fatty fish, poultry, eggs, beans, peas, nuts, or seeds into
your daily diet.
Fruit: Antioxidants found in many fruits help reduce inflammation and encourage healing. Besides keeping bones, muscles, skin, and tendons healthy, vitamin C also helps your body produce collagen. Collagen restores and maintains muscle mass and keeps joints lubricated.2 Incorporate mangos, kiwis, blueberries, and papaya into your diet and feel the benefits.
Turmeric: The active component curcumin in Turmeric has been found to have potent anti-inflammatory properties and can reduce post-workout inflammation and promote joint health. Aside from its countless therapeutic and anti-inflammatory properties, Turmeric has more than 100 unique chemical properties.3 It can add an exciting new flavor to rice dishes, soups, stews, sauces, and marinades and aid in the healing process.
Food is medicine! It is important to know which foods to add to your diet in order to maintain the health of your joints and muscles, but it is equally important to know which foods to avoid. Your joint and muscle health can be enhanced by avoiding saturated fats, sugars, processed foods, and fried foods.
The body requires nutritional food as fuel to function optimally. Take care of your health by maintaining a nutritionally balanced diet. ACE physical therapists aim to get patients back to health. Our physical therapists will customize a plan to meet your specific needs and get you feeling better quickly.
ACE Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine Institute was founded on the principles of high ethical standards, integrity, honesty, and professionalism. When you step inside one of their eight convenient locations in the Washington Metro area, your goal becomes theirs: returning you to your normal lifestyle as quickly and safely as possible.
1 https://www.webmd.com/osteoarthritis/guide/osteoarthritis-basics
2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8620403/
3 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92752/
