In the end, it all comes down to what you feed within. It’s an age-old tradition to eat food that is the easiest to digest when you are feeling sick. Having the right diet to support you when you are unwell may not only be helpful but also essential. When ill, the body experiences a sluggishness which may escalate with the wrong diet. At the same time, due to the medical expert advice of resting, it is often misunderstood that it may mean no movement at all. No exercise may lead to additional changes while recovering from the illness or injury. Having the right amount of exercise may reduce body stiffness and the flexibility may in fact accelerate recovery.
Through this blog I intend on sharing what type of diet and exercises may be helpful in overall recovery. The detailing of the exact food and the exercise may differ based on the illness or the injury of the individual. This blog focuses on the importance of diet and exercise in recovery.
Based on my lived experience, I’m sharing a few types of food that helped me as well as harmed me along with certain body movements that were useful during my recovery journey.
- Protein Intake – Since I was not able to expend a lot of my energy doing my regular activities, it was essential for me to control my carbohydrate intake. While I continued to focus on a balanced diet, I increased the portion of the protein-rich food in my diet in order to build my muscle capacity. Less carbohydrate made me less sluggish and more active in spite of being bed-ridden. Choosing the right source of protein highly depends on the doctor’s advice. However, high-protein intake definitely made a remarkable difference in my recovery.
- Home-cooked food – My body had already gone through a lot during my illness. With high medication and hormonal changes, the body’s digestive system took a hit and it became extremely challenging for the body to fulfill basic functions. Eating home-cooked food gave me the assurance that the ingredients used for cooking were of high quality, the hygiene of the cooking process was maintained and primarily it was fresh food.I was able to safeguard myself from bad gut health and other digestive issues that may have occurred due to low quality food, unhygienic cookware and the possibility of stale food that I would have attracted from external food sources.
- Water Intake – Time and again, it is often said that drinking water is highly essential for recovery of any kind. Water was my prime ingredient in healing and recovery. Water helped to flush out major toxins from the body and cleanse the body which in-turn helped massively in a speedy recovery. From heavy medication to digestive challenges to dehydration issues, water took care of everything during my illness. With no taste and no appetite, I had to force myself to drink a lot of water. Though a daunting task for me, it truly helped by huge margins in my recovery. Hydrated body and good gut health made it easier for me to bear the other challenges of my illness.
- Move and Turn – While I was immensely restricted in terms of my mody movement since I was diagnosed with critical neuropathy, what worked for me was building the muscle memory of what was moving in my body. The tongue, the eyes and to a small extent after I was discharged home, my upper body. From disciplined and meticulous neck, shoulder and arm movements, I was able to expend energy in some form from the body. This allowed my body to create appetite and sleep, both. It was an important aspect, since a lot of further recovery depended on how I made my body feel.
- Mental exercise – My mind got easily frustrated and irritated at everything since it was not getting the right mental exercise. This affected my recovery in many ways. Things started changing when I identified how to keep my mind occupied with the right things. Listening to audiobooks and learning a new language were a couple of things I used which kept my mind exercised. It definitely helped in overall recovery of the mind and the body both.
The content mentioned above is a generalized format of the eating habits and the exercises that worked for me. I strongly believe that these can create a path of speedy-recovery if they align with the medical expert’s advice.