Broken bones heal but that doesn’t mean that the healing process is easy. During the weeks of healing, you’ll learn how to function with less mobility, you’ll experience a lot of pain, and you may lose some work.
For these reasons, most people just want the whole process to be over and done with. Although it would be impossible to make your broken bones heal overnight, you can speed up the process.
Here are seven ways that you can help speed along the healing process:
1. Don’t Get Impatient
There are times, especially near the end of our healing period, that we become impatient. This can cause us to do something to make our healing process take even longer.
When you go out of surgery, no doubt your doctor gave you instructions on how to care for your broken bone. You should always follow these orders, even near the end.
You will have stages in your healing process in which some of your limitations will be lifted, but don’t make those decisions on your own. Wait for your doctor to clear you.
It may require a lot of self-discipline to stay off a bone when you feel like it’s back to its normal self but unless you have x-ray vision, you won’t ever know how healed a bone is.
It might help you stay put if you have someone like The JT Legal Group on your side to do all the legwork of securing compensation for your injury.
2. Make Sure You Eat Enough
Now is not the time to go on a diet. Your bones need plenty of nutrients to draw on when rebuilding bone tissue.
You need to make sure you eat three whole meals each day and snacks in between. Your body will need more than your normal calorie intake in order to heal faster.
When your body needs to heal a wound, your metabolism will shoot up. It takes an incredible amount of energy to perform the healing process.
3. Get Plenty of Sleep
Along with extra calories, your body will need extra sleep to complete the healing process faster.
During the day, your body will do some light healing but it goes into overtime when the rest of your body is at rest, or sleeping.
To make sure that your body has enough dedicated healing time to speed up the process, you should sleep as much as you can. This means eight hours or more per night.
If you have a hard time getting that much sleep at night, consider fitting in a cat nap in the middle of the day.
To learn more about how sleep helps the body, read this quick read from the Chicago Tribune.
4. Take a Daily Vitamin
Even while eating plenty of food, your body could be lacking in certain vitamins or minerals that the body needs. That is why nearly every doctor will recommend taking a daily multivitamin to stay in optimal health.
When you have a broken bone, there are certain minerals that are crucial to the healing process, since bones are made up of mostly minerals.
You should buy a multivitamin that is high in calcium, zinc, phosphorus, silicon, and copper. To ensure that these minerals are absorbed properly into the body and work at optimum levels, you should include vitamin C, D, B6 and K.
5. Drink a Protein Shake Every Day
Protein is the building block of the body. To help your new bone tissue to grow faster, you should provide it with plenty of protein.
The easiest way to do this is by drinking a protein shake every day. The average serving of a scoop of protein powder contains 25 grams of protein.
If you don’t enjoy protein shakes, you can always just focus on eating foods that have a higher protein content. These include meats, legumes, and cottage cheese.
6. Stop Smoking
If you are a smoker, you are greatly hindering your body’s natural healing process. Cigarette smoke contains a lot of chemicals that inhibit the cells responsible for healing bones from doing their job.
Making the decision to stop smoking would not only improve your bone healing rate but it will also bring many other health benefits.
7. Think Anti-Inflammatory
Inflammation is a natural part of the bone healing process. It’s part of the breaking down of broken tissue.
However, this inflammation can get out of control and this causes an excess of free radicals in your body.
When you include anti-inflammatory foods and supplements into your daily regimen, you can help speed up the transition from breakdown to building.
Antioxidants are powerful anti-inflammatories. Some of the best include quercetin, omega 3 fatty acids, and anthocyanins. You can take these supplements or eat from this list of anti-inflammatory foods.
Conclusion
While nature must take its course, you can give it a little nudge with these seven tips above.
After all, living with a broken bone is painful, limiting, and just downright annoying.
