Rehabilitation Nutrition for Injury Recovery of Athletes: The Role of Macronutrient Intake

Abstract

An adequate and balanced diet is of utmost importance in recovery and rehabilitation. “Rehabilitation nutrition” for injury recovery of athletes is similar to sports nutrition, except for the differences that concern the prevention of the risk or presence of sarcopenia, malnutrition, or dysphagia. Rehabilitation nutrition also aims, combined with training, to an adequate long-term nutritional status of the athlete and also in physical condition improvement, in terms of endurance and resistance. The aim of this paper is to define the proper nutrition for athletes in order to hasten their return to the sports after surgery or injury. Energy intake should be higher than the energy target in order to fight sarcopenia—that is 25–30 kcal/kg of body weight. Macro- and micro-nutrients play an important role in metabolism, energy production, hemoglobin synthesis, lean mass and bone mass maintenance, immunity, health, and protection against oxidative damage. Nutritional strategies, such as supplementation of suboptimal protein intake with leucine are feasible and effective in offsetting anabolic resistance. Thus, maintaining muscle mass, without gaining fat, becomes challenging for the injured athlete. A dietary strategy should be tailored to the athlete’s needs, considering amounts, frequency, type and, most of all, protein quality. During rehabilitation, simultaneous carbohydrates and protein intake can inhibit muscle breakdown and muscle atrophy. The long-term intake of omega-3 fatty acids enhances anabolic sensitivity to amino acids; thus, it may be beneficial to the injured athlete. Adequate intakes of macronutrients can play a major role supporting athletes’ anabolism.

Gender and Exercise in Relation to Obesity in Greek Elderly Population

“…In order to fight sarcopenia, energy intake should be higher than 25-30 kcal/kg of body weight. A high-quality protein intake, equally distributed in doses of 20-40g, is crucial to overcome the anabolic resistance to protein intake and increase postprandial muscle protein synthesis [48]. Three areas have been considered as key in respect to diet in sarcopenia: (1) vitamin D, (2) protein (rich in leucine) and (3) antioxidants.…”

“…Three areas have been considered as key in respect to diet in sarcopenia: (1) vitamin D, (2) protein (rich in leucine) and (3) antioxidants. High-quality protein from whole foods, as well as dietary supplements providing isolated proteins, such as whey, casein, egg, meat and soy increase accretion of postprandial protein and induce muscle protein synthesis [46,48,49]. Hence, physical activity and nutritional status are some of the major factors that affect body weight and compostion as the prevalence of sarcopenia in nursing homes and hospitalized patients (38% and 23%), who spend a lot of hours in bed and often do not have a choice of what foods to eat is two or three times higher than the community dwelling individuals (10%) that are more physically active and choose their own foods [10].…”

Nutrition for Older Athletes: Focus on Sex-Differences

“…Nutritional strategies have been proposed to help improve recovery from exercise-induced injuries involving immobilization and/or reduced activity [ 243 , 244 , 245 , 246 , 247 ]. One of the key considerations during the injury is to ensure that sufficient energy is consumed to prevent excessive muscle disuse atrophy and to support repair, without significantly increasing body fat.…”

Nutritional strategies to optimize performance, ­training adaptation and recovery in team sports

“…[35] and to provide nutritional support to those athletes ( Figure 2) to verify an adequate macro-and micronutrient intake as well as to optimize training adaptation and performance [40]. Due to the scarce scientific literature on the special requirements of female athletes, to date, no differentiated recommendations regarding CHO intake before, during or after exercise can be given for the female athletes [34].…”