Can Eating Healthy Help Your Heal After a Car Accident? Here’s What You Should Know
When recovering from a car accident, ensuring you receive proper chiropractic care in Tampa isn’t the only thing you should focus on. Surprisingly, your diet plays a major role in determining how your recovery goes. So, let’s take a closer look at what you should know when it comes to eating healthy. How can you eat to promote better and faster healing?
Recover Faster With Healthy Eating
In addition to consulting with healthcare professionals regarding your injury, you’ll also want to prioritize your sleep, stress management, and diet. Your diet, in particular, offers the building blocks your body needs to heal and bounce back. With that in mind, here are a few tips you’ll want to consider next time your grocery shopping!
1. Get Plenty of Protein.
Protein is present in all tissue in the body, particularly the muscle tissue, skin, and connective tissues. When we experience an injury, we often aren’t able to move as we once could until we’ve recovered. This can mean we lose muscle. However, eating adequate protein each day can minimize this muscle loss and help accelerate healing.
Consider adding chicken, eggs, lean meats, and even protein powder to your grocery list. At a minimum, most people require at least 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight.
2. Don’t Forget About Vitamin C!
Vitamin C acts as an anti-inflammatory in the body. Considering injuries often come with increased inflammation, eating vitamin C-rich foods can help reduce this and improve your range of motion as you recover. Additionally, collagen synthesis requires vitamin C, with research even showing how the combination of collagen and vitamin C may help accelerate bone healing.
3. Load Up on Zinc.
Research demonstrates how zinc plays a major role in wound healing. This means ensuring you’re getting enough of this mineral during your recovery is important. Some zinc-rich foods include oysters, meat, whole grains, and nuts.
4. Add in Omega-3 Fatty Acids.
Omega-3s are another food that can help reduce inflammation. They can even support improvements and maintenance of skeletal muscle mass.
On top of this, omega-3 fatty acids are important for overall brain health and cognitive function, indicating their important role in recovery of brain or head injuries. A few foods that contain a good amount of omega-3s include walnuts, chia seeds, fatty fish (like salmon, mackeral, and tuna), and olive oil.
5. Whole Foods Are Always Best.
It’s also worth noting that whole food over processed or pre-packaged foods is best for the body to heal efficiently andd effectively. Extremely processed foods can actually increase inflammation, potentially hindering your body’s healing efforts. Focusing on a whole foods diet, such as eggs, meats, whole grains, fruits, and veggies, will help your body truly thrive and potentially shorten your recovery time.
If you’ve recently experienced a car accident in Tampa, contact the Tampa Spine and Wellness team today! Look no further for some of the best chiropractors in the Tampa area. With a combination of adjustments and other treatments, we can help you get back to your normal.
