Improve Injury Recovery With Fish Oil, Protein & Antioxidants

When your body is repairing from an injury, your dietary and nutrient needs change. Two critical things you can do accelerate injury recovery are to take nutrients like fish oil that will help decrease inflammation and get more protein to prevent muscle mass loss due to inactivity.

Fish Oil & Antioxidants Reduce Inflammation

When we talk about decreasing the inflammatory response to injury, the goal is to help the body to eliminate waste products. When you damage tissue, the body produces a lot of "garbage" that needs to be removed. Several supplements can support the injury recovery process, including fish oil, and antioxidants such as green tea and curcumin.

Studies show that all three of these supplements can decrease the acute inflammatory response to muscle and connective tissue damage, leading to faster healing. For example, curcumin cream significantly accelerates healing and pain from an injury.

In addition, to prevent muscle atrophy due to immobilization, you need to eat extra protein. Get a regular dose of the branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) to stimulate protein synthesis and offset muscle loss. Taking extra BCAAs has been shown to enhance the rate at which tissue is repaired. BCAAs also reduce the muscle lost during recovery. Taking more essential amino acids decreases the time for an injured muscle to recover its original strength prior to the injury.

To recover faster use the following strategies:

• Get a higher protein intake aiming for a minimum of 1.6 g/kg of body weight. That's 116 grams for a 160 pound person.
• Take BCAAs or a whey protein supplement between meals to pad protein intake.
• Shoot for getting at least 20 grams of essential amino acids at every meal.
• Dose with fish oil to improve injury recovery, taking 1 to 3 grams a day.
• Take curcumin to tamp down inflammation and pain.
• Drink extra water—at least 3 liters a day.