When I began eating to run, I quickly realized that injures no longer sidelined me. In fact, the one time something flared up just over a year ago, it was very much connected to the fact that for a few months I’d pretty much abandoned many of my healthful eating practices (happens to the best of us?).
Other than that, all the shin splints, major IT band issues, achilles tendonitis, runners knee, plantar fasciitis and other odd things that I’d struggled with over the years – sometimes so badly I couldn’t run at all – they disappeared and I’m running strong and injury-free today.
When I began to apply the eat 2 run principles to clients who came to me injured, a very cool thing happened. They healed! And quickly. One client, Robin, came to me suffering from a series of inflammatory injuries that seriously compromised his training (from tendonitis to Morton’s Neuroma). He started eating to run… And within 2 weeks he was back out on the road training. Three months later, he crossed the finish line of his first marathon – completely injury-free.
So how do you help your body to heal?
Here are three suggestions to hasten recovery (and help keep you injury-free for good):
1. Eat Healing Foods
Follow the Eat 2 Run Anti-Inflammatory Diet – click here to download your copy.
In particular, include tart cherry juice, raw cacao (try this chocolate cherry shake), ginger (try this ginger tea), green (or matcha) tea and blueberries in your daily diet.
Important things to avoid include sugar, processed cooking oils (soy, corn, safflower, sunflower, vegetable) and anything you might have a sensitivity to (gluten, dairy, too much caffeine / too much coffee, alcohol, etc).
2. Supplement
To hasten your recovery, you may wish to try the following supplements which help to manage inflammation, thereby allowing healing to occur:
- Turmeric & Bromelain (such as the one by Natural Factors), take the capsules between meals, away from food and with lots of water
- 3-9 grams of fish oil per day (an omega-3 fatty acid supplement such as Nordic Naturals or Ascenta)
3. Refrain from Using NAIDs
Refrain from using non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen. That’s not so say you shouldn’t use them at all, but recent research suggests that NSAIDs may prevent an injury from healing as quickly due to the fact it extinguishes all inflammation – and in fact, some inflammation is necessary for healing to take place. NAIDs appear to interfere with both ligament and muscle strain healing.
It’s no fun being injured, I know. In fact, if you’ve been injured for a while I bet you’re at the point of doing anything to get back out there. That’s what Julie felt like – 3 years ago she had been unable to run for 7 months and was seeing every practitioner out there that might help her to recover from her knee injury. Upon adding eat 2 run nutritional strategies to the mix, she was back out on the road in one month. She has been running strong ever since.
Happy running 🙂
Sarah J Cuff, RHN