First off, I want to dedicate this article to the amazing team of doctors and staff at the UCLA Medical Center. I truly feel blessed to have received treatment from Dr. Sharon Hame who is probably the most respectful and deeply caring surgeons I have ever met. She has an outstanding reputation and is known in the sports world out here as one of the best surgeons in her field. Now I know why, thank you Dr. Hame!
So as I write this blog post, I am just over one week into recovery from surgery to fix a labral tear in my right hip with some massive resurfacing work done to my hip socket. I mean my hip was such a mess that this ‘standard’ two-hour surgery, took four hours. So needless to say, it’s been a painful ordeal so far!
However, upon my first visit to physical therapy, the first question asked of me was whether or not I had a high tolerance for pain. I found out later that the reason for the question was that I was moving rather well for someone in my condition. To be honest, I’m not really sure what my threshold for pain is compared to other people. I think I’m pretty tough, but I’m also the girl who cried at the finish line of the La Jolla Half-Marathon last year…..because…..I was hungry! So I don’t think my threshold for pain is really all that high, I just think I have the ability to not let an injury completely define me. Why this is relevant will become apparent shortly.
The purpose of this article is to share with you what I have done pre- and post-surgery to recover as quickly as possible, with as little pain as possible. What I’ve learned on this journey through friends and research has greatly benefited my recovery progress. My physical therapist has only seen one other person come as far as I have in this amount of time. The range of motion in my hip is remarkable for only one week after surgery and there is hardly any swelling in the hip. I should back to running at least four miles in about five months. Swimming and cycling will happen before that.
While I hope that no one reading this article has surgery any time soon, my reason for sharing my key learning’s with you is because I think these tips can also be applied to training recovery – for faster recovery, and honestly even everyday life. If you live with a chronic disease (diabetes, digestive issues, autoimmune disorders), please consider taking these tips to heart :)
Don’t define yourself by your problem. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t fixate on the fact that I have an injured hip. I learned many years ago to never ‘baby’ an injury or make it the primary focus of your thoughts. Go about your everyday life as though everything is completely normal. Because when you start to fixate on an injury or even a disease, you become defined by it. In healthcare public relations, we never use the term diabetic, we always say someone living with diabetes. There’s a big difference in those two terms.
Now I’m not saying to ignore injuries because that’s just not smart. But what I am saying is that if you think about your body as totally normal and totally healthy, it will be. The brain is very powerful. Right now, I know I can’t walk without my crutches and I wouldn’t try to. However, I do move around like nothing is bothering me. Yes, it is painful to sit in a chair and yes, it is painful to hop around on one foot in the kitchen and my God yes, it is insanely difficult to take a shower, but I don’t ever think about how horrible it is that I’m dealing with this, because then that becomes my reality. If I do something stupid, my body will let me know with a friendly reminder of sharp stabbing pain! Other than that…I am an Olympic hopeful who will be back at training in no time!
How is this relevant to daily life?
Applying principals like this is similar to the philosophy principals of Positive Mental Attitude (PMA). The conversation you have with your brain is your reality. So what are you telling your brain? And for you ladies, if you haven’t watched that video for the Dove ‘Real Beauty’ campaign – what an eye opener! You will cry when you watch it. So take a moment to step back and evaluate the conversation you are having with yourself on a daily basis. And if you are being harsh to yourself, imagine that the voice in your head is a real person. Then ask if you would hang out with that person? I’m guessing you would not – so kick her/him to the curb and change the conversation! Also think about how PMA can change the dynamics of your training sessions. Can’t get to that next level of your training? Pretend your Lance Armstrong (sans the bad attitude and dope ;) on your next ride or in spin class. I do it all the time!
Stop taking your pain meds. You don’t need them and they are not great for you. Now don’t get me wrong, I took my pain meds for three days after my surgery, but then stopped – even though I am still in pain. You need to feel the pain because your body is communicating with you. If you can’t feel the pain, then you run a very high risk of doing something stupid and delaying recovery. Also, these things will absolutely destroy your liver. As an alternative I used Phenocane to help me with the pain.
How is this relevant to daily life?
This is also true in sports. If you finish a workout and find yourself taking anti-inflammatory medication on a regular basis, it may be time to re-evaluate your workout routine. You have to address what is causing the pain in the first place. No one, in my opinion, should be on medications on a daily basis – your body has an amazing ability to heal itself if you give it half the chance. Contrary to current beliefs, food can heal your body – but it has to be real food. Bread, pasta, boxed cereal, and mass-produced frozen and/or packaged foods are NOT real food. You have to make real food in your own kitchen. Most of the food that the food industry sells us today is not even digestible by the human body. So if you’re running and eating whole grains and not losing any weight – ditch the whole grains. Modern wheat is killing this country and if you have not picked up a copy of Wheat Belly, get it! :)
I digress, back to the point.
Food is medicine. Now we get to the juicy stuff. As I’m sure you know by now, I dedicate a large amount of my time to learning about food and its healing properties. I already know there are certain foods that cause inflammation in the body: omega-6 oils (vegetable oils), sugar, wheat, and dairy. Because I want to avoid any further inflammation/swelling in my body, I immediately cut these foods, and processed food, out of my diet to give my hip the best possible chance. But what I wanted to know more about were the types of foods that can help the body recover and support the growth of healthy cartilage. Here’s what I found:
So as I write this blog post, I am just over one week into recovery from surgery to fix a labral tear in my right hip with some massive resurfacing work done to my hip socket. I mean my hip was such a mess that this ‘standard’ two-hour surgery, took four hours. So needless to say, it’s been a painful ordeal so far!
However, upon my first visit to physical therapy, the first question asked of me was whether or not I had a high tolerance for pain. I found out later that the reason for the question was that I was moving rather well for someone in my condition. To be honest, I’m not really sure what my threshold for pain is compared to other people. I think I’m pretty tough, but I’m also the girl who cried at the finish line of the La Jolla Half-Marathon last year…..because…..I was hungry! So I don’t think my threshold for pain is really all that high, I just think I have the ability to not let an injury completely define me. Why this is relevant will become apparent shortly.
The purpose of this article is to share with you what I have done pre- and post-surgery to recover as quickly as possible, with as little pain as possible. What I’ve learned on this journey through friends and research has greatly benefited my recovery progress. My physical therapist has only seen one other person come as far as I have in this amount of time. The range of motion in my hip is remarkable for only one week after surgery and there is hardly any swelling in the hip. I should back to running at least four miles in about five months. Swimming and cycling will happen before that.
While I hope that no one reading this article has surgery any time soon, my reason for sharing my key learning’s with you is because I think these tips can also be applied to training recovery – for faster recovery, and honestly even everyday life. If you live with a chronic disease (diabetes, digestive issues, autoimmune disorders), please consider taking these tips to heart :)
Don’t define yourself by your problem. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t fixate on the fact that I have an injured hip. I learned many years ago to never ‘baby’ an injury or make it the primary focus of your thoughts. Go about your everyday life as though everything is completely normal. Because when you start to fixate on an injury or even a disease, you become defined by it. In healthcare public relations, we never use the term diabetic, we always say someone living with diabetes. There’s a big difference in those two terms.
Now I’m not saying to ignore injuries because that’s just not smart. But what I am saying is that if you think about your body as totally normal and totally healthy, it will be. The brain is very powerful. Right now, I know I can’t walk without my crutches and I wouldn’t try to. However, I do move around like nothing is bothering me. Yes, it is painful to sit in a chair and yes, it is painful to hop around on one foot in the kitchen and my God yes, it is insanely difficult to take a shower, but I don’t ever think about how horrible it is that I’m dealing with this, because then that becomes my reality. If I do something stupid, my body will let me know with a friendly reminder of sharp stabbing pain! Other than that…I am an Olympic hopeful who will be back at training in no time!
How is this relevant to daily life?
Applying principals like this is similar to the philosophy principals of Positive Mental Attitude (PMA). The conversation you have with your brain is your reality. So what are you telling your brain? And for you ladies, if you haven’t watched that video for the Dove ‘Real Beauty’ campaign – what an eye opener! You will cry when you watch it. So take a moment to step back and evaluate the conversation you are having with yourself on a daily basis. And if you are being harsh to yourself, imagine that the voice in your head is a real person. Then ask if you would hang out with that person? I’m guessing you would not – so kick her/him to the curb and change the conversation! Also think about how PMA can change the dynamics of your training sessions. Can’t get to that next level of your training? Pretend your Lance Armstrong (sans the bad attitude and dope ;) on your next ride or in spin class. I do it all the time!
Stop taking your pain meds. You don’t need them and they are not great for you. Now don’t get me wrong, I took my pain meds for three days after my surgery, but then stopped – even though I am still in pain. You need to feel the pain because your body is communicating with you. If you can’t feel the pain, then you run a very high risk of doing something stupid and delaying recovery. Also, these things will absolutely destroy your liver. As an alternative I used Phenocane to help me with the pain.
How is this relevant to daily life?
This is also true in sports. If you finish a workout and find yourself taking anti-inflammatory medication on a regular basis, it may be time to re-evaluate your workout routine. You have to address what is causing the pain in the first place. No one, in my opinion, should be on medications on a daily basis – your body has an amazing ability to heal itself if you give it half the chance. Contrary to current beliefs, food can heal your body – but it has to be real food. Bread, pasta, boxed cereal, and mass-produced frozen and/or packaged foods are NOT real food. You have to make real food in your own kitchen. Most of the food that the food industry sells us today is not even digestible by the human body. So if you’re running and eating whole grains and not losing any weight – ditch the whole grains. Modern wheat is killing this country and if you have not picked up a copy of Wheat Belly, get it! :)
I digress, back to the point.
Food is medicine. Now we get to the juicy stuff. As I’m sure you know by now, I dedicate a large amount of my time to learning about food and its healing properties. I already know there are certain foods that cause inflammation in the body: omega-6 oils (vegetable oils), sugar, wheat, and dairy. Because I want to avoid any further inflammation/swelling in my body, I immediately cut these foods, and processed food, out of my diet to give my hip the best possible chance. But what I wanted to know more about were the types of foods that can help the body recover and support the growth of healthy cartilage. Here’s what I found:
- Bone broth. Not only can bone broth help repair your gut and restore your healthy mucosal lining, but it is chocked full of collagen, gelatin, glycine, and proline. Bones also represent an entirely different realm of nutritional content than basic muscle meat: calcium and phosphorus, along with sodium, magnesium, and other trace minerals. In my opinion, bone broth is a ‘super food’ that should be incorporated into everyone’s diet on a regular basis. Bone broth is much easier than your body to utilize than popular joint health supplements because it is in liquid form and it’s a natural source of chondroitin and glucosamine. In fact, it used to be a staple in traditional diets, but now most people might be pretty grossed out by the thought of drinking it. Well, if you have arthritis, joint swelling/pain from difficult workouts, or even cellulite – I recommend getting past this taboo and making/drinking your own batch. Please make sure to use clean bones from grass-fed, pasture raised animals. Recipe here: http://scdlifestyle.com/2012/02/how-to-make-nourishing-beef-bone-broth-to-heal-your-gut/.
- High-quality sources of omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 fatty acids are known to have natural anti-inflammatory effects in the body. It’s also an essential element of our diet, because it cannot be produced by our body. We have to get it from external sources, like fish. With that said, I have been eating a can of sardines every day. Not only do sardines provide my hip with the omega-3s that it needs, it’s also high in calcium content (twice that of milk), vitamin D, and phosphorous. I also consider these little fishes a ‘super food’ that should be incorporated in the American diet. For more about the benefits of sardines (cancer prevention, cholesterol health, and brain health), check out: http://www.livestrong.com/article/317267-what-are-the-health-benefits-of-sardines/.
- Blood type diet. Maybe it’s me, but there’s a lot of Paleo and vegans out there these days. And boy, do they love to battle on the points of which diet is better. So which one is better? Well, my personal thought on the issue is that we do need certain nutrients from animals. However, there are many successful endurance athletes out there who thrive on a vegan diet. It really boils down to your blood type and what your body needs. We’ll focus more on this issue in the near future, but in the meantime, the main point with the blood type diet is this: based on your blood type, certain foods are either beneficial (promote healing properties in your body), neutral or should be avoided (can cause inflammation in your body). I downloaded the ‘Eat Right for Your Blood Type’ app and have been trying to incorporate as many beneficial foods as I can, as well as avoiding the foods known to cause some sort of aggravation for my blood type. When you are in the thick of your training and heading towards race day, I highly recommend trying to stick to your blood type diet as closely as possible because you are putting your body under tremendous physical stress and you want to support your body the best way possible and not cause further stress through your nutritional choices. Oh, and if I haven’t said it already….stop eating gluten/wheat! ;)
- Turmeric juice. Okay, aside from the fact that you just look cool drinking turmeric juice, according to MindBodyGreen (one of my favorite holistic websites for nutrition and wellness advice), turmeric is known to be one of the most powerful healing herbs. It is great for bones and joints as it has anti-inflammatory properties. Turmeric's also a natural liver detoxifier and a kidney cleanser. So turmeric juice is really a two-fold benefit for my recovery. I get the anti-inflammatory effects of the herb, while helping to detox my liver/kidney from all the medication I had to take. Here’s a recipe for turmeric juice: http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-6780/A-Recipe-for-Turmeric-Juice-A-Powerful-Healing-Beverage.html.
- CapraFlex and MAP. These are the only supplements I am relying on. CapraFlex is a complete bone and joint formula, which contains naturally occurring glucosamine and chondroiton from type II chicken collagen. Master Amino Acid Pattern (MAP) provides eight essential amino acids for building protein and is known to be an effective protein supplement for building muscle and bone. It is also known to promote fast recovery after a hard training session.
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