The Fitness Adviser

When I was injured with a severe case of Jumpers Knee in both legs, I told the orthopedist that my injury was not healing or improving at all. His answer was that it just needed more time. Later on, when talking to a friend of mine about my problem, he suggested that I get a blood test to make sure I’m not missing something in my blood.

I took the blood test and low and behold, I was low on iron! Should it have been obvious to the doctor to check my blood, like it was to my friend? Yes. Did he do it? No, and in not doing the blood test he missed a valuable piece of information as to why I wasn’t healing properly. To prevent the same thing from happening to you, here’s list of 3 things that can stunt your injury recovery that your doctor might miss.

Your Body Lacks Important Vitamins and Nutrients Vital To Healing

Getting a blood test when you’re not healing well might be a no-brainer, but somehow doctors still manage to miss this. Make sure you get your blood checked and that you’re not missing any vitamins or nutrients vital to healing. You might not only find out the reason that your shoulder isn’t healing up, but why you’re sleepy all the time too.

You’re Overweight or Underweight

Your computer’s motherboard fried from overheating because your cooling system broke. You can buy a new motherboard and replace the cooling system, but it turns out that your computer doesn’t have proper ventilation and is prone to overheating. You can replace the cooling system and motherboard, but there’s nothing stopping it from happening again since the heart of the problem, the lack of ventilation, hasn’t been fixed.

The same thing goes for injuries. You may have been injured because you fell or because you played a game of basketball for the first time in 5 years with guys 10 years younger than you and overdid it. While those are the immediate reasons you’ve been injured, your overall fitness level and muscle imbalances are the real problem. So if you’re overweight, it’s time to get motivated to slim down, and if you’re underweight, it’s time to put on a few pounds.

You’re Not Sleeping Properly

Sleep is the time for your body to heal. If you’re not getting enough deep sleep, your body isn’t able to properly repair the damage that you did to your body during the day. When you have an injury, sleep is even more important since your body needs to do more healing than usual. Add some light exercise to your daily routine in the morning or afternoon to help you sleep better at night.

There you have it, the 3 things that can stunt injury recovery that your doctor might miss. Sometimes the most basic things are those that are most easily missed.

-Rafi

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 8:17 am and is filed under Injuries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.