The Importance of Nutrition for Sports Injury Prevention and Recovery
What we eat plays a huge role in how our body functions and stays healthy. You’ll no doubt have heard about the importance of a healthy, balanced diet! There’s a reason it’s talked about so much. Everything we consume has an effect on our bodies. Food is like the fuel that helps us to function. Which fuel you choose has a significant effect on how your body performs.
When you’re taking part in sports and training, you’re asking your body to do a lot. Therefore, you need to make sure that you are giving it the correct fuel to allow you to perform optimally and to prevent injuries.
How does nutrition help to prevent sports injuries?
Athletes are pushing their bodies to the limits, and while injuries are always a possibility, eating the right diet can help to reduce the risk of injury. When you’re exercising, especially to the extremes, you need to ensure you are giving your body the energy it needs. If you’re engaging in activities like sports which are burning a lot of energy, you need to account for this within your diet.
This study on professional footballers and their nutrition explains that when they aren’t getting the right amount of energy from their diet it can, “accentuate fatigue, immune-suppression and the predisposition to injury”.
The right nutrition helps you to give all that you’ve got to your workout. When you have the right fuel in your body, you have the energy and focus you need to give the best possible performance, whether it’s running a marathon, playing a football game, or even just doing some home training. You always want to be on top of your game!
Giving your body the right amount of vitamins and minerals helps to keep your bones strong and at the right density, which reduces the risk of fractures and breaks. In the same way, the right diet helps with strengthening tendons and ligaments. Tendons and ligaments help your muscles to function. Without the right nutrition, they can become weakened which can make them more susceptible to strains and other soft tissue injuries.
Just as with tendons and ligaments, it’s vital to keep your muscles strong, as you’re asking them to do a lot during exercise. Providing them with the right nutrition helps prevent muscle strain and injury.
What do you need in your diet to reduce the risk of injury?
Now we know how the right nutrition can help prevent injuries, we need to take a look at what that actually means in terms of what you should be eating.
Carbohydrates and protein
Carbohydrates keep your energy levels up during exercise. Your muscles can only store a certain amount of carbs, so it’s vital that you keep them ‘topped up’ so your body can access the energy it needs.
The British Nutrition Foundation states that if an athlete doesn’t consume the right levels of carbs, “it is likely that their performance and recovery will be impaired, as carbohydrate is the key fuel for the brain and for muscles during exercise.”
Starchy and wholemeal foods are great sources of carbs, such as wholemeal bread, wholegrain rice and whole-wheat pasta.
Protein helps your muscles to stay strong, to grow and to repair themselves. This detailed article on sports nutrition explains that, “Protein foods will supply building blocks (amino acids) for hormones, enzymes, immune cells, muscle tissue, bones, cartilage, and blood.”
During exercise, the muscle protein in the areas of your body being worked hard breaks down: you need protein in your diet so your muscles can repair this damage. This is how you get stronger, faster and fitter!
Great sources of protein include chicken, steak, fish, and eggs. The proportions of carbs and protein you should be adding to your diet depend on your exercise level, your weight, age and other factors. It’s recommended in general that 15–20% of your daily calories should be sourced from protein, while carbs should make up, “45% to 65% of your total calorie intake, depending on activity”.
Having both carbohydrates and protein an hour or two before your exercise, and half an hour after a workout, can help to prevent injuries. You can do this through your diet or choose to use a supplement. Many athletes choose shakes and other supplements to ensure they are getting exactly the right amount of carbs and protein.
Calcium and vitamin D
Both calcium and vitamin D help to keep your bones strong, reducing the risk of stress injuries from hard workouts. You can get calcium from low-fat diary foods like milk, cheese or yogurt. Foods like cheese, egg yolks and fatty fish are great sources of vitamin D. You could also choose to take a supplement.
Essential fats
There are fats which can be healthy, and which should be part of your diet, especially if you’re doing a lot of exercise. These fats help cells in your body to repair themselves, reduce inflammation, provide energy and keep bones, ligaments and tendons lubricated to make movement easier. Essential fats can come from foods such as nuts, oils and fish.
Vitamins C and E
Vitamins C and E provide antioxidants, which help to prevent damage to the cells in your body. Vitamin C helps with tissue repair, wound healing, and maintaining your immune system among other functions. Vitamin E plays an important role in protecting tissues and organs within your body from damage.
This study found that the best sources of vitamin C are, “fruits (mainly oranges) and fruiting vegetables (mainly tomato and sweet pepper)” and great sources of vitamin E were, “vegetable oils (sunflower and olive), non-citrus fruits, and nuts and seeds”.
Hydration
Last but not least, remember to hydrate! Ensuring your body has enough water is just as important as what you eat. The more exercise you do, the more you sweat, which means you need more water! The British Nutrition Foundation state that, “when exercising at higher levels or in warmer conditions, it is important to try and stay hydrated before, during and after exercise to prevent dehydration.”
Nutrition to aid injury recovery
Even with the right diet, when you’re exercising to extremes and asking so much of your body, injuries are common. A 2019 study on the topic states that, “Injuries are an inevitable consequence of athletic performance with most athletes sustaining one or more during their athletic careers.”
When injuries do occur, nutrition can play a vital role in helping you recover quicker and more effectively! The study we looked at earlier on professional footballers concluded that, “Nutrition is among the key recovery strategies in professional football.”
Let’s take a look at how the right nutrition can help you heal, and how you can adjust your diet to help your body recover.
Fighting inflammation
Inflammation occurs when our body is injured, and at first, it’s very useful. It helps to protect us and starts to repair damage. However, if you’re healing from a bigger injury, this inflammation response can become prolonged, and can actually become detrimental to healing.
The key to combatting this nutritionally is reducing foods which contribute to inflammation and increasing foods which reduce inflammation. Fruits, vegetables and healthy fats help to reduce inflammation. Foods high in vitamin C can be extremely helpful for injury recovery.
‘Junk foods’, such as processed foods and those which are high in refined sugars can contribute to inflammation, so it’s important to reduce them while you’re recovering.
Be cautious about reducing calories
Although it seems logical that if you are no longer working out, your body needs less calories to stop you gaining weight, this isn’t the case. It’s really important that you continue eating the same number of calories. It’s hard work for your body to heal from an injury, so it still needs a great deal of energy. If you don’t give your body enough calories during the healing process, it can actually cause healing to slow and be less effective.
If your injury is long term and you need to adjust your diet to account for the lack of activity, it’s best to get professional guidance on how you can balance your diet to prevent weight gain, while still giving your body the calories it needs to heal.
Consume antioxidants
Antioxidants help the body to heal, whether it’s from a wound or an injury. Make sure you are eating plenty of fruits and vegetables. This article from Nuffield Health explains that antioxidants, “help inhibit inflammation and also reduce levels of free radicals (toxic waste products which are produced where inflammation is present).”
Keep eating that protein
As we mentioned earlier, protein helps our muscles to repair themselves, so this becomes even more important when you’re actively trying to recover from an injury. Make sure you’re getting plenty of healthy protein in your diet.
Zinc
Zinc has many vital roles in our bodies including keeping our immune system functioning well and aiding in injury and wound repair. A study on the topic explains that Zinc, “is important for human health and disease due to its critical roles in growth and development, bone metabolism, the central nervous system, immune function and wound healing”. You can get Zinc from foods like red meat, brown nice and lentils.
Calcium
Calcium keeps our bones strong and helps them to repair themselves, so eating foods which are high in calcium can be particularly useful for fractures and other bone injuries. Foods which are high in calcium include cheese, yogurt and milk.
Iron
It’s vital to get enough iron in your diet especially during healing. Iron helps our bodies to produce blood cells and a protein called collagen. Collagen is essentially the glue which holds our bodies together, providing the structure for our bones, muscles, tendons and skin. You can see why it would be vital for injury repair! Foods like red meat, eggs and fish are high in iron content.
Magnesium and potassium
Both magnesium and potassium help to keep our nerves and muscles are working properly. Magnesium also helps with bone formation. Foods like nuts, legumes, whole grains and seeds among others are great for magnesium and potassium consumption.
Vitamin D
A vital role of vitamin D is to help store minerals in your bones, keeping them strong and helping them recover. This vitamin also helps your blood to absorb calcium. Fatty fish, diary products, cheese, and egg yolks are some great vitamin D sources.
Supplements
If you’re unsure about getting the exact right amounts of vitamins and minerals from your diet, or you simply want to make sure you are covering all of your bases, supplements can be a great way to make sure your body gets what it’s needs. Make sure you do your research and consult a medical professional before adding any new supplement to your diet.
8 Tips to ensure you get the right nutrition
Remember that guidelines are great, but everyone’s body is different, and what we individually ask of our bodies varies. Take your time to figure out what diet is right for you! Here are some tips to help you:
Make sure you do your research to figure out what is right for your bodies requirements.
Seek professional guidance if you are unsure: you could speak to your doctor, a physiotherapist, a personal trainer or another medical professional.
Before you start any new exercise, ensure you take the time to figure out how you need to adjust your diet to compensate for the extra pressure you’re putting on your body.
If you become injured, consider how you can alter your diet to help you recover faster and get back to your usual activities.
If you’re injured, don’t be afraid to ask loved ones to help you with shopping or cooking, to ensure you can get the nutrition you need.
Specific injuries may benefit from specific adjustments to your diet: do your research or ask a medical professional.
Don’t forget hydration! It’s just as important as what you’re eating.
Remember that you are allowed to have treats, but it’s about balancing those out in moderation to ensure our body is getting what it really needs.
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Daniel Medina, Antonia Lizarraga, Franchek Drobnic, (2014), “Injury Prevention and Nutrition in Football”. Gatorade Sports Science Institute.
British Nutrition Foundation, (2020), “Nutrition for sport and exercise”.
Stefanie A Giampa, MS, Jan P. Hangen, MS, RD, LDN, (2020), “Sports Nutrition”. Stop Sports Injuries.
García-Closas R, Berenguer A, José Tormo M, et al, (2004), “Dietary sources of vitamin C, vitamin E and specific carotenoids in Spain.” Br J Nutr. 2004 Jun;91(6):1005-11.
Close GL, Sale C, Baar K, Bermon S, (2019), “Nutrition for the Prevention and Treatment of Injuries in Track and Field Athletes.” Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2019 Mar 1;29(2):189-197.
Shirley Ward, (2018), “Recover from injury faster with these healing foods.” Nuffield Health.
Lin, P. H., Sermersheim, M., Li, H., Lee, P., Steinberg, S. M., & Ma, J. (2017). Zinc in Wound Healing Modulation. Nutrients, 10(1), 16.
