by Mitch Hauschildt, MA, ATC, CSCS
Note: In this blog series on optimizing tissue healing, we will be looking at food, nutrients and supplements. We will be discussing products from our partner, Titan Nutrition. The owners at Titan are longtime friends and they make superior products at a great price (message me for a friends and family discount). You can explore their products or use another brand. It is completely up to you.
We often look at the world of physical rehabilitation and think about clinicians healing their patients. We like to think that we, as caretakers, are responsible for healing their injury or ailment. But the reality is that WE DON’T HEAL ANYONE FROM ANYTHING!! Our job to is set up the environment to allow for healing to take place. That’s all that our fancy tools and modalities are designed to do.
Unfortunately, one thing we often forget about in this conversation are the foods that we consume. They play an important role in tissue healing and they should be part of our regular conversation with our patients. I’m not over here pretending to be a registered dietitian or anything like that, but I do think that if we can take a few minutes to have a quick conversation with our patients about what they are consuming, it will make a difference in our patient outcomes.
Setting Up the Ideal Environment
The lens we need to look through for this conversation is the idea that we are trying to do everything that we can to make the ideal environment to promote tissue healing. This means that our patients need to get enough quality sleep, reduce their stress, and make good overall healthy choices. When the environment is right, the body is able to dedicate every ounce of energy and resources to the task at hand…healing. If the system is fighting fatigue, a poor immune system and so on, it has to split its resources, compromising tissue healing.
The goal of this blog series is to provide some ideas and insights that can be used as part of our conversations with our patients to help them heal quickly.
Micronutrients
Admittedly, there are a lot of things that happen with Micronutrients that I am not smart enough to understand. Chemistry was never a strong area of my education and without a strong chemistry knowledge, it is tough to really dive in deep to this topic.
So, what I think about when I think about micronutrients is that they basically fill all of the gaps between our macronutrients. They keep us healthy and do all of the little things that we oftentimes like to ignore. They play an important role in our immune and gut health. It may seem like a bit of a big gap to bridge between immune and gut health and tissue healing, but they are much more closely related than we realize.
Immune Health
As I mentioned before, we want to create an ideal environment for the body to heal itself. That is where our immune system comes into the equation. If we are spending a lot of our body’s resources fighting off viruses and illness, our body can’t focus on healing. The resources become divided. We have to work to optimize our immune health.
Which micronutrients should we prioritize?
As a general rule, our micronutrient needs can be met with large servings of fresh fruits and vegetables. Or, more simply, they can be met with a good multivitamin. They are inexpensive and easily accessible. They will cover you in most situations and will help to optimize your immune system. But, there are a few areas that do need some extra attention.
Vitamin D
Vitamin D is emerging as one of the biggest issues that we face with regards to vitamin and mineral needs. It is proving to be immensely important for both immune health and bone density. There have been several studies showing that Vitamin D supplementation helped both prevent and get over COVID, demonstrating its power for a lot of people with regards to viruses and illness. Vitamin D also works directly with Calcium to create strong bones.
Vitamin D levels are becoming chronically low for many people for a few reasons. First, we get Vitamin D from sunlight. Our culture has been trained that sunlight is bad because of the skin cancer risk, so people are constantly lathering up with sunscreen. This lack of exposure to sunlight is leading to a decrease in bone density for young athletes and poor immune health.
Another way that we get Vitamin D is with fortified foods, such as milk. Milk is another product that our current culture is moving away from. We are being pushed towards dairy alternatives and away from animal products. I’m not saying that is all bad, but it is hurting our vitamin D levels.
It is my opinion that most, if not all young people who are active should be on some sort of a vitamin D supplement.
Vitamin C
This is another vitamin than many of us are deficient in for a variety of reasons. Research is showing that a combination of vitamin C and collagen has a significant effect on ligament and tendon health. So, the combination of tissue and immune health means that vitamin C is important to our health.
Gut Health
What does our gut health have to do with tissue healing? A lot actually.
If our gut isn’t working properly, it will increase our overall levels of inflammation, which impacts tissue healing. Again, poor gut health is hurting our overall environment for tissue healing. For most of us, gut health is achieved with probiotics. Our current US diet is certainly not rich in probiotics. We eat too much process and fried foods, which contribute to this problem.
Probiotics can be consumed with things like yogurt (another dairy product that is frowned upon in parts of our culture). Or, you can supplement probiotics. They are available in a variety of forms and easy to get. There is a difference between them, so do your homework.
Another way of getting your probiotics that has become my staple is through a “green” supplement. There are several of these on the market, but the reason I like them so much is that they are a concentrated form of “super foods” that is easily consumed in a shake. They not only help my gut health, but they are packed with micronutrients and antioxidants. My daily dose of greens helps me with inflammation, immune health and my overall gut. I don’t miss it
Conclusion
Our gut and immune system each play an important role in our overall health and tissue healing. Make sure your patients are meeting their micronutrient needs.
Next up:
Optimizing tissue healing with collagen.
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