Ask HN: How best to heal your body?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=796382

by axod • 17 years ago

12 15 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I've moaned in the past at off topic posts on hn, so feel slightly guilty that I'm now asking for similar slightly off topic advice, but here goes. Hope you think of it as being in the "body hacks" bucket. I really value the advice you guys give, so any would be really great on this question.

I broke my hip on Thursday whilst skating, and it's going to be a long recovery (3-6 months). What things should I do? Has anyone here had a long recovery from something?

Things I've started thinking about:

* Should I modify my diet to make sure I'm getting 100% of the nutrients, calcium etc needed to fix bones quick? Any particular things you think are really important? I've read some places that a balanced diet is more useful than a calcium rich diet? Also read that caffeine is bad since it can make you loose Calcium?

* Should I do regular gentle exercise, or mainly rest :/

(Tech details: I had a dynamic hip screw+plate for a Intertrochanteric Hip Fracture)

Oh and while we're at it, is there any device I could buy to watch the bones healing (X-Ray add-on for my camera? Perhaps not X-Ray since it's harmful if used too much? Any other technology?). Watching a time lapse video of my hip healing would be simply awesome :) Or at least would give me something to do and focus on for the months ahead...

adrianwaj• 17 years ago

Just be patient, good luck. Don't break it again in the same way.

yannis• 17 years ago

Please do not try any X-Ray experiments on yourself, unless you want to neuter yourself!

As regards to dieting go with what your body tells you it wants to eat. As to focus learn a new computer language or contribute code to an open source project.

yan• 17 years ago

The best you can probably do now is eat well and rest. I hurt my tendons quite a bit and I know for bones and connective tissue, you can't do much better than rest.

edit: and I hope you feel better. I'm sure we can expect more activity from you now.. or more frequent updates to mibbit :P

Tichy• 17 years ago

"Or at least would give me something to do"

I don't think it will heal so fast that you can actually watch it live ;-)

axod• 17 years ago

A watched kettle never boils eh :( true.

jaddison• 17 years ago

Patience is indeed key.

I've had several sports related injuries over the years; two things have always caused problems for me:

1. my impatience to get back into the swing of things too soon

2. not listening to the physiotherapist/doctor/rehab personnel

The above two points combined together caused me to start doing activities that I shouldn't be doing far too soon after the injury and not do enough of the (prescribed) activities that I should have been doing for long enough after the injury.

While I'm now mobile, I can't do many of my favorite sports/activities anymore - hindsight is 20/20, naturally.

I just wish I'd been more patient, receptive to advice and persistent. Live and learn.

terpua• 17 years ago

I have had 2 major neck operations due to 3 fractured vertebrae so...

Listen to your doctors and your physical therapists. I did lots of fiction reading and exercised like hell when I was allowed / needed to. Eat healthy, like you normally would even without a fractured hip (although your doctors probably recommended supplements). Do activities that bring a smile to your face.

Bottom line: let your body heal naturally, don't worry too much and as most of the comments here have said, be patient.

keeptrying• 17 years ago

You can learn a lot about your body while your recovering. This will help you understand the objective of the physical therapy exercises that you'll be doing when your injury has healed to that point. Also you'll understand how better balance and just being in better shape can stop you from getting re-injured.

There are also strength coaches who can give you specific rehabilitative exercises that your therapist might not know about. If you read the work done by Mike Boyle and Mike Robertson, you'll get an idea. You could even email them and ask what all you could do to fix your hip faster.

I bought a few anatomy books and listened to a lot of different lectures on the knee till I realised that glue+hamstring strength decreases the pressure on the patella tendon (which I had torn). And then I created my own exercises till I'm pretty much healed now.

Its a long process but I feel that the appreciation you get for fitness from this will help you for the rest of your life.

pasbesoin• 17 years ago

Since physical health directly relates to our performance as well as well being, I don't see this topic as at all off-topic.

From another perspective, many people "hack" their health. It seems a worthy topic.

araneae• 17 years ago

No.

Probably almost nothing you can do can make you heal faster. You can make it heal slower, however, pretty easily (say, by breaking it again!) but it's hard to beat millions of years of evolution with only a few hundred years of medical science.

icey• 17 years ago

Good lord, that sounds painful. Hopefully you have a rapid recovery.

Your doctor is probably the best source of information regarding exercise.

As far as your diet is concerned, you should just focus on eating as healthily as you can. Your body is going to heal itself at it's own pace; assuming your normal state is not one of malnourishment, you should be planning for what happens towards the end of your healing process. By that, I mean you're going to be largely immobilized (I assume) from this injury, so the best you can really do for yourself is to try to keep your overall health up in a general sense.

I wouldn't focus on calcium rich diets versus a balanced diet - a balanced diet is almost always better, and then you don't end up with follow-on side effects of drastic diet.

Beyond that, all I can recommend is you follow the advice of your physical therapist. They make not sound logical, but they're good at what they do.

billswift• 17 years ago

If you are going to be mostly immobilized the most likely potential problem is gaining weight. Be very careful not to eat more than you need (be especially careful about snacking from boredom). I speak from experience when I say not gaining weight in the first place is a LOT easier than losing it later.

mwerty• 17 years ago

Not sure what your eating habits are but I went from 140 => 200 pounds when I spent a year mostly in bed (my eating habits were not too healthy to begin with).

Make sure your activity/eating ratio is adjusted as necessary.

stcredzero• 17 years ago

I am recovering from a back injury, which started with a couple of days in bed, unable to even get up to go to the bathroom. I'm still dealing with pain even over a month after.

I recommend: eating Food, as in Michael Pollan's books. Eggs. Milk. Broccoli. Green Beans. Bananas, Strawberries, Fruit of all kinds. (Wash and freeze strawberries split in half for a convenient low calorie snack.) Produce. Steaming is fast and easy for moderate portions. Oatmeal -- the one food you can eat that doesn't rot. (Actually, of all grains, Oats rot the fastest, because they have high fat and protein content.)

I think the eggs and milk have helped me the most.

Also: be mean to your equipment if you can be kind to your body by doing so. And don't be afraid to pony up for the equipment you need, if it means you can protect your injury. Research to get the best quality and price, but don't delay it and let your body soak up wear it doesn't need. Amazon can be your friend, especially if it's hard to get out of the house.

Lastly: be polite and reasonable, but firm and gently insistent when dealing with medical personnel. You need to be your own advocate. Think ahead. Cover implications and contingencies. Ask. Think about the implications of the bureaucratic machinery, and point them out.

agent86• 17 years ago

In 2007 I was involved in a major automobile accident. I fractured my neck at C6-C7 and completely shattered my right leg just above the ankle. I broke both bones completely, resulting in having a rod and screws implanted in the bone.

It was 12 weeks with the neck brace on, and 14 weeks before I could walk unassisted with a cane. Full healing and recovery took even longer then that.

The first thing you need to realize is that you don't have to hack your body - based on your tech details the doctors have already done that for you. Welcome to the bionic club! The practice of medicine in general is akin to hacking - it either helps the body do something better, or coaxes it into doing something it wouldn't otherwise do.

Your diet should be as normal and healthy as it can be. You don't need to do anything special. If something was out of whack that you needed, it would probably be detected by now. I was low on potassium and sodium after my emergency surgery and they wouldn't let me leave until it was corrected. FYI - IV potassium burns :).

Your physical therapist can assist you with exercise. In general they'll want you to do a variety of things in the office and give you some exercises for daily homework. Do them! Your therapist should be able to put together some appropriate exercises if you want to go beyond the basics.

The most important thing for you right now is to be extremely comfortable with your doctors and physical therapist. You need to be able to tell them everything and anything without fear or embarrassment. Sometimes the best test a doctor can do is to ask what you are feeling, and pushing through the pain in PT doesn't make you a hero. Communicate, communicate, communicate.

Be careful with painkillers. They are important, but they can be addictive. It might not be a bad idea to have someone keep an eye on the bottle and make sure you stay within the prescribed limits.

I'm not sure what devices you could use to watch yourself heal, but you can probably get your X-Rays and other test images on CD when they are taken. I've even got a bunch of physical X-Ray, CT and MRI films.

To help heal my leg, which broke in a spot at great risk for nonunion, they put me on an ultrasound bone healer. Nifty little gadget - I still have it!

http://www.engadget.com/2006/07/25/portable-bone-healing-sys...

Ask HN: How best to heal your body?

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