If you're healing from an injury right now, whether it's a major injury or a minor injury,
whether it's something like a lower back injury, sprained ankle, or even a cut, like a flesh wound,
there are foods you can eat that can really accelerate your healing journey. That's what
this video is about today. Hey, my name is Lucas. I'm a yoga teacher, I'm a teacher trainer, I'm a
podcaster, and I'm also a nutritional coach. Over the past 10 years I've had unprecedented access
to medical doctors and nutritional experts via my podcast. In this short video we'll talk about
number one, what happens when you get injured and why basic misunderstanding about what's going on
inside your body makes us misunderstand what to put in our mouth. Number two,
we'll talk about plus one foods, foods that you could add in that'll help you to heal. We'll talk
about minus one foods, foods you could potentially reduce and maybe eliminate to accelerate your
healing process. And lastly, we'll talk about some supplementation options if you wanted to
go the supplement route along your path. A quick disclaimer here: I'm not a medical doctor if you
have a major injury, if you're on medication, please don't change any kind of pharmaceuticals,
or make any decisions without consulting with your doctor. And if in doubt, err on the side
of caution. Let's talk about injuries, what happens, where do we get confused. Let's imagine
that you're out hiking on a Saturday afternoon and everything's going great but you step on a rock,
you roll your ankle, you keep going, you manage to get back home, but when you take off your boot you
look down at your ankle and it's double the size, it's black and blue, and it's pretty painful. In
fact, you're limping down the hall to get to the bathroom. So, you spend about three minutes on Dr
Google "what to do about sprained ankle?" and you find two things right away. The first one is the
acronym RICE: rest, ice, compress, elevate. Okay, the second thing is ibuprofen. You take about 500
milligrams of ibuprofen, you go to the living room and now you start to work on this rest,
ice, compress, elevate acronym. So what do you do? You get a bag of ice, wrap your ankle. Okay,
now we need to compress, so you get a bandage and you wrap it really tight, and now you elevate your
ankle. Because of that ice, less circulation. Because of that compression, less circulation.
Because of that elevation your foot is now higher than your heart, less circulation. Because of the
ibuprofen, less inflammation. So all of that sounds really great, except that's not how
you heal. So, here's what happens next. Two hours later you're feeling much better. Your significant
other comes home and says "Hey, I got your message, you sprained your ankle." "Oh yeah, I
was terrible when I got home, it hurt to even walk down the hall, but now look at me, my inflammation
it's back down to normal size, the pain is almost gone, I can walk up and down the hall,
I don't feel anything. You want to go out for dinner?". "Yeah, let's go out for dinner!" Here's
what's happened: you have covered up the pain, nothing's happened, you are not healing faster,
you're not doing great, you are in exactly the same place you were two hours ago, except worse,
because you've now gotten in the way of your body's own healing process. When your body gets
injured it launches an immune cell response and cytokines come in to clean up the mess, and there
is often angiogenesis where new blood vessels are formed to get more circulation, not less.
That RICE acronym, three of those four things - the rest is a good idea - but three of those four
things are reducing circulation. How is that going to help? You're not going to get nutrients to the
place where you need it. That Ibuprofen is doing the same thing by blocking your healing response.
Here's the problem, there are two things, we get confused about - pain and inflammation. Remember,
pain even though it's uncomfortable and truly unbearable sometimes, pain is adaptive,
it is the result of tens of thousands of years of evolution. It's called nociception, this ability
to sense pain, your hand on a hot fry pan, you recoil, rolling your ankle and you suddenly limp.
This ability to sense pain, it's adaptive, it's designed to keep you safe. Think about it like
the guardrails on that same trail where you rolled your ankle. The guardrails help you to stay on the
path and not fall over the cliff, the guardrails help you to limp down the hall to the bathroom
because your ankle is damaged. When you take off the guardrails you'll walk just fine down the
hall, unfortunately you're deepening that injury to your ankle, you're not helping the healing
process. Pain is the guardrails. If possible, we want to keep the guardrails on. The second
thing is inflammation and people get really mixed up about this. Inflammation can be problematic,
inflammation can be runaway and disconnected from an injury, like you know brain inflammation could
be fatal, for example. But two hours ago you rolled your ankle, inflammation not only is it
natural, not only is it appropriate, it's part of the healing process. That inflammation is going to
be crucial for your healing. So, if possible, we want to feel our feelings, we want to feel
the pain. If possible, we want to allow our body to have an inflammatory response, within reason,
so that it can heal up. And what we want to do instead of trying to do rest, ice, compress,
elevate, instead of the ibuprofen, we want to take a look at foods, especially during the first few
days of an injury. That can really accelerate our healing process. And there's three different
categories that we'll chat about. The first one's are collagen building blocks. Collagen is the most
abundant protein in your body, it's all over the place, it's in your skin, it's in your hair, it's
in your muscles, your tendons, your ligaments, your cartilage, and to build collagen your body
needs some macronutrients, protein, it also needs some very important micronutrients like zinc,
and copper, and vitamin C, and sulfur. Let's talk first about protein. During a healing time in your
body it's really helpful if you bump up your protein intake to about one gram per pound of
bodyweight, per day. This is not like an extreme protein diet, there's nothing risky or extreme
about this. But for most people that's a little bit more than they're intaking right now. So,
if you weigh 150 pounds, one gram per pound of body weight would be 150 grams per day. This isn't
crazy but probably, for most of you, that means an extra high protein snack, or meal, or to use
a protein shake. For a lot of people that I work with the easiest thing is just to have a protein
shake or two, usually in the form of whey protein or pea protein. Those are the ones you can get in
very natural forms, without any weird chemicals or flavors. They're relatively palatable and
for most people they're able to bump up their protein intake by 30 or 50 grams a day without
completely disrupting their lifestyle or having this massive lunch that they don't want to eat.
Let's now talk about these micronutrients, because these are a little bit more complicated to come
by. Things like zinc, and things like copper, and sulfur, and vitamin C. Let's start with vitamin C
because that's the obvious one. There's vitamin C all over the place, but more in plant-based foods,
things like bell peppers, and broccoli, and blueberries, citrus fruits, obviously have a lot
of vitamin C. Vitamin C is an important building block in collagen, so making sure you get ample
vitamin C can play a big difference. Zinc is an important micronutrient and you can get zinc
in things like pumpkin seeds, or shellfish for example. Copper is another very, very important
micronutrient that you can find in nuts and seeds. You can also find it in organ meats
and some other strange foods that you may or may not be eating. And the last one and this is one
of the more important ones that people neglect is sulfur-rich foods. Sulfur is a mineral, it smells
a little bit like rotten eggs and you would find this in cruciferous vegetables like broccoli,
and cauliflower, and chard, and kale. And you say "Yeah, yeah, I eat those sometimes," but a lot of
people eat those foods every day and so this can be one that makes a big, big difference.
So, we've talked about the micronutrients that you need for collagen, we've talked about the
macronutrients, bumping up your protein, now let's talk about some anti-inflammatory foods.
But wait a minute, Lucas you said inflammation is good. Inflammation is good initially, but you also
want to give your body the things that it needs to fight inflammation on its own, because your
body has internal processes to take care of these things and when you eat anti-inflammatory foods,
things like turmeric, things like the bromelain in pineapple, things like omega-3 fats in fish
or algae oil, or flaxseeds, or chia seeds, these natural anti-inflammatory foods they allow your
body to do the process on its own. Instead of inhibiting, instead of having a roadblock
for the healing journey, your body simply has the tools it needs for, if and when it's appropriate,
to turn off inflammation. There's a very big difference between taking 500 milligrams of
ibuprofen and taking chia seeds, flaxseeds, fish oil, krill oil, bromelain in the form
of pineapple, or curcumin in the form of turmeric, or a supplement every day. So we want to make sure
we have anti-inflammatory foods pretty much every day, especially during that initial healing phase.
The last micronutrient is almost a macro micronutrient, that is magnesium. Magnesium
is one of the most abundant minerals in your body and it's also all over the place in the
planet but we don't usually get enough of it. We need a lot of it, like 500 milligrams per day,
and you get it from things like dark green leafy vegetables, anything with chlorophyll, dark green
stuff has magnesium, also dark chocolate has a lot of magnesium. What magnesium is really helpful for
is if you damage your ankle, if you hurt your lower back, if you have a rotator cuff injury,
sometimes the muscles that surround that area will tense up in an attempt to protect you and keep
you safe, and again, this starts off adaptive, but when you're trying to sleep and you have overtense
muscles magnesium can be very, very helpful for relaxing muscles. So, we're building collagen, we
are eating anti-inflammatory foods, and then we're taking magnesium to help our overactive hypertonic
muscles to relax. Now, let's talk about minus one foods. There are some really obvious things but
it really is worth reiterating, you want to stay away from processed foods, specifically cookies,
crackers, and biscuits, and all this stuff in the middle aisles of the grocery store. It's not
because these things are kryptonite, there's a lot of weird chemicals in there for sure,
but the reality is we don't really know what those chemicals do. I'm sure some of them are bad,
I'm sure some of them are benign, but here's what we do know: you'll find a lot of processed sugar,
and you'll find a lot of processed oils, and both excess sugars and sweeteners,
and rancid and denatured oils, those can definitely lead to inflammation here, which
can spread to inflammation in other places. So when you add fire to fire, it's not a great idea.
The other thing you want to reduce or eliminate, especially during a healing phase, is alcohol.
You'll hear a lot of great things about alcohol, this is people trying to tell you good things
about bad ideas. Alcohol is a neurotoxin. It's a toxin for your body in general. The more you
drink, the more your body has to deal with, your body has to attempt to eliminate this.
For some people alcohol can be inflammatory, for other people not necessarily. But for all
people your body has to metabolize and get rid of that alcohol. It's extra work, it's just an extra
burden. You want to free up your body's resources for healing. And lastly, we want to really try to
avoid excess sugar. Sugar's not the enemy, every cell in your body can utilize glucose,
but the poison is in the dose. Excess sugar, high amounts of sugar, high sugary diets,
that very quickly goes from something that your body and brain love to something that becomes
neurotoxic and can create a cascading effect with hormones and inflammation throughout your
body. So, reduce those processed foods, we will reduce our sugar intake, and we'll try to reduce
or eliminate alcohol, and that can make a very big difference. The last subject that I want to
touch upon is supplements. Whenever I bring up the topic of supplements immediately I get hate mail,
and trolls, and people say "I don't believe in supplements, I get all the nutrients I need from
the foods I eat". If you do, that's amazing. If you do, you're probably one in a thousand.
It's very, very difficult to get all the nutrients from the foods you eat, not just because of modern
agriculture, but because it's a very difficult thing to do in general, it always has been. People
have lived off of almost only potatoes, there are cultures that have lived off of almost only corn,
almost only rice, this is the history of humanity, crazy nutritional imbalances. The idea of trying
to become balanced is actually a sign of wealth and abundance and it's harder than you'd think.
There are very few people who have everything in balance and very few people who are going to take
all the foods we talked about and compile them into a meal plan. If you do, good on you, keep
going. But I think for most of the things we've chatted about today, especially during a healing
phase, a short phase, it might be helpful to think about supplementation. What might you supplement?
We talked about protein shakes, it can be really helpful. We talked about zinc, and copper,
and we talked about vitamin C, and sulfur. I'll put a link down below, and we'll share up here
on the screen as well, some suggested dosages. And you might want to also think about supplementing
with omega-3 and supplementing with magnesium. The biggest risk with supplements is not impurities,
these are very, very simple supplements, the biggest risk is not unscrupulous companies,
the biggest risk is vitamin belly. Vitamin belly is when you wake up in the morning, you take a
big handful of all the stuff we just talked about and 30 minutes later you feel nauseous and want
to throw up. This is a very real risk of taking nutritional supplements and one of the biggest
reasons that I think it makes sense to try to get things from whole foods. But experimenting with
your supplements, spacing them out throughout the day, taking things with or without food,
and figuring out what works for you, it can make a really big difference. People always want to ask
me for brand name recommendations, for everything that we've talked about, with the exception of
Omega-3s, it doesn't really matter the brand. Something like ascorbic acid, vitamin C, whether
that's coming from an orange or from a laboratory your body can't tell the difference. This is
very easy to synthesize, there's no mystery, it's extremely safe. When it comes to zinc,
when it comes to copper, the same thing. These are very, very simple nutritional supplements, there's
not a lot of mystery, the brand is irrelevant. Almost any pharmacy will have what you're looking
for. The one that you need to watch out for is Omega-3s, because these are fats. You can think
of these like juice, you wouldn't buy any brand of juice, you wouldn't drink old juice, or rancid
juice, and when you're buying Omega-3s they do tend to be expensive and the brand does matter.
I don't endorse, I don't have any affiliation with any kind of brand, but generally speaking you want
a dark bottle, you want a a relatively recently bottled nutritional supplement, and it will
end up becoming relatively expensive. What that usually plays out to is around 50 cents per day,
and so if you're looking at a 30-day month it's probably going to cost you around 15 plus dollars
per month for a high quality omega-3 supplement. That might be fish, or krill, or algae oil,
and the krill and algae oil are progressively more and more expensive because they're a little bit
more niche. In terms of the research, you can draw your own conclusions in terms of which is
the best source for you. So, we've talked a lot about injuries, we've talked about pain, we've
talked about inflammation, talked about foods you can add, foods you can reduce, and the option
to potentially use supplementation as kind of a self-care routine. Hopefully that's been helpful
for you. If you'd like more science-based yoga videos click on that link down below to subscribe.
If you have questions or comments I always love to hear from you down below in the comments section.
You can find my teaching calendar, I have online classes and in-person events around the world,
at yogabody.com. And lastly, you'll find a full link to everything that we're doing in the PDF
down below, with nutritional supplements and a list of all the foods and ingredients that
we've chatted about. Thanks so much for joining me. Hope that's helpful. Wishing
you a speedy recovery with whatever injury you're dealing with and I'll see you in the next video.