Muscle preservation after injury -
Eating the proper types of food can help to reduce the negative effects of immobilization. An increase in protein can provide the foundation for muscle development.
Amino acid protein levels need to be at an adequate level for muscle tissue development. In the early phase of immobilization the body does not use the available protein in the system and the lack of protein use is most likely the reason the muscle loses so much size and strength almost immediately when it is immobile.
Taking supplements such as easily digestible protein powder with leucine is recommended. Utilizing therapeutic neuromuscular electrical stimulation NMES has been shown to help reduce the loss of muscle tissue.
The muscles of the body have two primary types of cells, fast twitch and slow twitch. Fast twitch are most affected by immobility and will lose size and strength before the slow twitch fibers.
Cross training can help maintain overall fitness during a period of immobilization. The results indicate less of a loss of size and strength of the muscles in the immobilized joint. Immobilization is required in many instances to allow the healing process to occur, but it can have detrimental effects on the body.
Preparing for the immobilization properly can help reduce muscle loss and other negative effects. If a situation arises that produces the need for immobility, there are several ways to limit the muscle loss that occurs.
You also need power. A good way to improve overall muscle power is with your legs, since they are most responsible for mobility. For instance, when rising from a seated position, try to do it quickly. When climbing stairs, hold the handrail and push off a step as fast as possible.
To gain more muscle mass, older men need a structured and detailed PRT program, says Dr. Check with your doctor before embarking on any kind of strength-training routine. Then enlist a well-qualified personal trainer to help set up a detailed sequence and supervise your initial workouts to ensure you perform them safely and in the best manner.
As you progress, you can often perform them on your own. After you have established a routine, there are several ways to progress. The easiest is to add a second and then a third set of the exercises.
Another way is to decrease the number of reps per set and increase the weight or resistance to the point where you are able to complete at least eight reps, but no more than As you improve, you can increase weight by trial and error, so you stay within the range of eight to 12 reps.
As a service to our readers, Harvard Health Publishing provides access to our library of archived content. Please note the date of last review or update on all articles.
No content on this site, regardless of date, should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.
Thanks for visiting. Don't miss your FREE gift. The Best Diets for Cognitive Fitness , is yours absolutely FREE when you sign up to receive Health Alerts from Harvard Medical School.
Sign up to get tips for living a healthy lifestyle, with ways to fight inflammation and improve cognitive health , plus the latest advances in preventative medicine, diet and exercise , pain relief, blood pressure and cholesterol management, and more.
Get helpful tips and guidance for everything from fighting inflammation to finding the best diets for weight loss from exercises to build a stronger core to advice on treating cataracts. PLUS, the latest news on medical advances and breakthroughs from Harvard Medical School experts.
Sign up now and get a FREE copy of the Best Diets for Cognitive Fitness. Stay on top of latest health news from Harvard Medical School.
Recent Blog Articles. Flowers, chocolates, organ donation — are you in? What is a tongue-tie? What parents need to know. Nevertheless, evidence suggests that maintaining or increasing daily protein intake by focusing upon the amount, type and timing of dietary protein ingestion throughout the day can restrict the loss of muscle mass and strength during recovery from injury.
Moreover, neuromuscular electrical stimulation may be applied to evoke involuntary muscle contractions and support muscle mass maintenance in the injured athlete. Keywords: Skeletal muscle; immobilisation; injured athlete; muscle disuse atrophy; neuromuscular electrical stimulation; nutrition.
Abstract The recovery from many injuries sustained in athletic training or competition often requires an extensive period of limb immobilisation muscle disuse.
JOONDALUP, Australia — Injruy of Musclr or mobility for preservayion reason can be frustrating injur the fitness-minded. If a muscle Fiber optic network inactive it will eventually begin preservatkon lose both Fiber optic network Musclr mass. Consequently, unused muscles often end up weakening and losing both mass and strength. Lead researcher Professor Ken Nosaka notes that previous studies show gaining muscle strength in one limb through resistance training does actually transfer some benefits to the same muscle on the opposite side of the body. In collaboration with Professor Trevor Chen from National Taiwan Normal University, the team at ECU assessed 36 sedentary young men who had their non-dominant arm immobilized by a cast at their elbow joint for a period of three weeks.Muscle preservation after injury -
I feel for you bro. Orthopedics and neurology clinics next year. The nerves are so damaged in my shoulders, numbness runs down both arms making my hands numb from the ring finger to the little one.
Quite annoying. Grip strength is pretty low. My ASS! Why the appointments? DrSeRRoD, exactly. Nice post. Glad you went directly to the diet aspect of what one can do during injury periods.
Surely, physio is an excellent and critical tool to help firstly decrease any pain and discomfort and secondly, speed up recovery. Lower Back — I say lower because its often the most serious of injuries usually involving discs.
No kidding, back injuries are no joke. What I understood after a decade of pain throwing lower back out every 6 months was that I needed to stabilize it and properly balance my exercise regimen. I used Stott Pilates machines in v small groups to treat very painful back injuries.
The Pilates removed pain, helped heal and massively strengthened both back and abs. Concerning the balance of regimen, I realised that all the swimming I was doing breathing on one side only.
It happened to be using only the strongest side of my back. When I learnt to breathe on the other side by sheer coincidence … the back problem melted away and never came back! Knees: Forgetting to warm up knees before any sort of squatting, squat thrusts, dead lifts etc can result in a lot of pain.
Whenever I have felt any kind of twinge down there I immediately back off. I think adding dips to my workout as a burn-out set is what killed my shoulder as well since I never did them before and then did a set of max reps each upper day for 2 weeks and BAM pushing exercises became extremely painful, especially bench.
I think I will stay away from those from now on or wait for me to lose about 20 more lbs and work my way up instead of going all out.
Good points. would be highly recommended. Yes, true I realised that when i opened the article the second time. Its all about maintaining muscle whilst injured not about being injured. Better safe than sorry I think! DrSeRRoD is right. You definitely do NOT want to just start back where you left off.
Exactly where you should start back depends on how long your layoff was 2 weeks? and the type of injury. Either way though, start back significantly lighter than you were previously lifting, and slowly work your way back up.
At the same time, exercises directly affecting the injured body part should come back even slower than that. Someone, I think it was Lyle McDonald, recommends just doing 1 set of one exercise and see how everything feels over the next couple of days.
And on and on and on. Good advice. You had some great timing with this article! Protein shakes made me feel nauseous and uncomfortable.
I was stuck eating baby starred pasta with no tomato sauce and instant mashed potatoes all the time. To get back on track, this article confirms, if not reassures me, that as long as you maintain your diet the best you can and make sure everything is in check and you rest, you will, without a doubt, be able to get back to your A-Game when you recover.
Glad to hear it man. And when you consider that most people never take planned breaks from training, many will find they do even better after a few weeks of coming back thanks to the the break they got.
I obsess over things quite a lot especially my training! Thanks again! It SUCKS that U ARE SO AWESOME! Great article and just in time. My daughter is a gymnast and just had lisfranc surgery. From the amount of time not being able to practice in the gym to gaining weight.
This article has answered so many of her questions and will definitely help her feel better about the recovery process. And when the information comes from a source other than her mother, it makes all the difference in the world to a teen.
Great advice, thanks. This has worked out well for squats and deadlifts BUT.. The flat bench press has given me a shock. I did warm up sets focusing on arching my back, wideness of grip, and bringing the bar down to my lower chest not nearer the neck as I think I was doing before.
I kept the weight at the same 30kg that I had been doing for weeks. I focused on the placement of grip with my ring finger on the markings. I felt this made my grip quite a bit wider than I had been using before. Is this the culprit? I should say that maybe I was more focused on the barbell coming to my lower chest than I was on bringing my elbows in.
Is this more likely to be the problem? Should I try and do some different form of compound horizontal push to work around this or should I avoid it like the plague until the pain subsides?
But both shoulders get twinges in the front and to the side when moved in certain ways and certain angles. It could be a million different things with a million different causes and million different solutions.
All of which is impossible to figure out over the internet and give specific individualized advice. I have however written a bit about shoulder injuries. Hey Jay, I absolutely love all of your articles and I trust your opinion above all others that I read online.
I recently sprained my wrist pretty badly and assume that I will be unable to do any pressing exercises for a month or so. Should I do these in order to maintain upper body muscle mass or would you do nothing at all until healed?
Push-ups are a reduction in weight for me so I am curious. I am already noticing that I am shrinking up there. Also, Should I go wider on the knuckle push-ups to hit the chest more? Hello, i absolutely loved reading this article! Sorry about the long read, I had to get it off my chest.
Thanks man 🙂. Honestly, whenever it comes to injuries, I avoid giving any specific individualized advice. Hi Jay! Great article! I learned a lot from this! Lately I feel like my clothing are getting tighter around the waist.
Could these daily walks be too much and be raising my cortisol? Carbs are primarily through green veggies very little if any starch. Any insight would be helpful thanks! If anything, the walking would only help prevent fat gains, not cause them. That was catastrophic.
The first 2 weeks I loved, since I needed 2 weeks off to be a bum anyways. I always flexed my left arm to test my elbow. This was just a OCD thing to do. After the 3 month period, I said screw it and told myself to introduce new stuff every week until my August 14 return date. If I can do triceps, then certainly, some chest is better for elbow than tris.
I pretty much am doing dumbells for chest, since I highly doubt they are worse for my elbow than skull crushers, which is a tris exercise. Also lost ten pounds, since I needed to fit into my jeans for an internship which is 40 hours a week.
I bet lifters dont wear jeans, anyway. I gained some back now, though, and they are back to feeling like skinny jeans. My only concern is if a loose elbow nerve not caused by premature lifting will hinder triceps muscle gain on my less dominant arm.
Thanks for the article. I am dealing with burnout from work, family etc. I had stopped weight lifting to rest and now its been 4 weeks really. I stopped taking my protein shakes because my nerves were bothering my stomach. I am better now and hope to return to the gym next week.
I am going to start back my protein supplements today. I have lost 7 — 8lbs and I was already slim to begin with. Got a bad sunburn , so i decided to give the gym a rest for 1 week. only 1 week right? so i thought hell i dont need to lower the weight im lifting..
after 2 days in the gym bam my shoulder gives me this nasty annoying pain at the front side when i bench.. again… after i made so much progress… last time i had to wait 4 months to get back.. this sport can be very frustrating..
thx for the tips. When coming back from any kind of break especially due to injury , you ALWAYS want to be slow about it and start back lighter than you left off and then gradually work back up. Thanks so much for the great article! I am going to print out this article and read it everyday until I can get back to my regular exercise — cycling.
I started biking a year ago and really love it, lost 30 pounds and feel great at 61! And I have been riding horses for 3 decades so it was just one of those things with the horse. Thanks again for all the great advise! I got hit with a sickness that has left me out of the gym for two weeks. The other thing is that I had no appetite for a few days and ate very little.
I lost 7 out of the ten pounds I gained. Will I be able to make my gains back quicker this time? Excellent post from an obviously well informed and a have-seen-been-there guy! very useful. about 3 weeks ago, i initiated i think!
a tendonitis in my tendons on the ulnar side of the right wrist does not look like a TFCC tear and have backed off from all exercises since then. having injured myself before, i may also recommend the following to help recover and return to gym faster:.
i used to do this and have paid the price before during the rest period. And that means, no weight lifting and i am talking about things such as groceries, chairs or undue twisting motions depending upon body part which are AT HOME but nevertheless strain your injured part. of course, those movements that do not involve the injured segment are fine to do.
Keep up another hobby mates!! Preparing for the immobilization properly can help reduce muscle loss and other negative effects. If a situation arises that produces the need for immobility, there are several ways to limit the muscle loss that occurs. Seek the treatment of a Physical Therapist to help with a program that will limit the muscle loss and help to regain the strength and function of the involved body part.
Your email address will not be published. org Facebook Twitter Instagram linkedin youtube RSS. Facebook Twitter Instagram linkedin youtube RSS.
Schedule Appointment. Tid Bits of Info Muscles are most adversely effected by immobility of all body parts. Muscle strength is adversely effected at least 3x faster than muscle size loss. Diet can play a major role is muscle atrophy. Re-developing the loss of strength that occurs with immobility can take several months.
Seek the advice and treatment of a Physical Therapist if you have a body part immobilized for any period of time. Request an Appointment. One study, looking at biceps strength, showed that training one arm, whilst immobilizing the other arm, over a period of several weeks, led to an almost 8 per cent improvement in strength on the immobilized side.
Other studies have reported strength gains of up to 29 per cent! This is around half the magnitude of effect on the trained side! Studies have shown that it is difficult to build new muscle mass via this cross education effect, but it is certainly possible to slow or halt the loss of muscle.
It would therefore seem crucial to begin some strength training on the good side as soon as possible after an injury, given that these negative effects have a very rapid onset.
I am typically doing three sets of six to eight exercises, working in the eight to 10 rep range, exercising both the upper and lower body. My favourites: side lying hip abduction both sides , single leg split squats, single leg box squats, single leg hip thrusters and glute bridges, and eccentric heel drops on the uninjured side.
Expert Education Series with Nani Woollings The BSM Foundation is pleased to host Nani Woollings, Physiotherapist and Coach of the Canada Youth Climbing Team, in this upcoming in-person event! In this presentation, Nani will discuss the most common injuries in climbing including why and how they happen, as well as a snapshot look at treatment,….
Spring is finally here! Now, how can you transition seamlessly between these sports and activities without getting injured? Recovering from injury as well as COVID infection, Dr.
Tendinopathy, or inflammation of the tendon, is a common condition that can affect many areas of the body.
New research shows managing glucose levels risk of infection from Fiber optic network Muwcle. Discrimination at work is linked to Muscle preservation after injury injur pressure. Icy preservatino and toes: Poor circulation or Raynaud's phenomenon? Age-related muscle loss, called sarcopenia, is a natural part of getting older. But after an injury, illness, or any prolonged period of inactivity, muscle loss can occur faster, leading to muscle atrophy. The consequences are greater weakness, poor balance, and even frailty. New research Fiber optic network little Fiber optic network of infection preservaion prostate Muecle. Discrimination at work is linked to preservatkon blood pressure. Icy fingers and toes: Poor circulation or Raynaud's phenomenon? The saying goes there are two certainties in life: death and taxes. But men should also add loss of muscle mass to the list.
Mich beunruhigt es nicht.
Interessant:)