Nutrition Applied to Injury Rehabilitation and Sports Medicine

Luke R. Bucci

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000142242
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicina
• Subtopic: Fisioterapia, medicina fisica e riabilitazione

This timely and exciting new book brings together for the first time the readily available choices of dietary supplements and their relationship to injury rehabilitation. Nutrition Applied to Injury Rehabilitation and Sports Medicine supports the rational use of specific nutrients for specific healing conditions. Guidelines for nutritional programs applied to specific conditions are provided for practical application.

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION AND REVIEW OF BIOLOGICAL BACKGROUND

I. INTRODUCTION

“More medical manpower is expended in treating musculoskeletal problems than in treating disorders of any other single system.”

Rosse and Clawson, The Musculoskeletal System in Health and Disease.¹

The human body is amazingly capable of repairing damage to its supporting structures. Given adequate time, the outcome of almost every injury, trauma, or insult will become resolved so that an individual can survive and continue existing. It seems that humans have the ability to heal themselves under even extremely adverse conditions (starvation, bitter cold temperatures, concurrent infections). The practice of surgery to physically alter biological structures by inducing physical trauma (wounds) in order to correct or ameliorate more significant problems is one example of healing connective tissues. With considerable skill and care, thousands of patients each day are routinely wounded and expected to heal. By far, the vast majority of surgical patients heal quite well. However, after resolution of an injury by healing, seldom is a full return to preinjury status attained. Fear of a degradation in physical performance after an injury has healed is perhaps most important in athletics and sports, where physical skills are paramount for performance. This fear and biological facts have spurred attempts to enhance the healing process by any means possible. This book will consider the nutritional means that have been applied to injury rehabilitation and sports medicine.

A. PURPOSE AND SCOPE

The purpose of this book is to acquaint the reader with scientific evidence on attempts to use nutrients to more fully effect a favorable outcome of healing. Since this endeavor has been practiced since before recorded history, this book will focus on use of specific nutrients or combinations of nutrients taken by mouth and will not focus on intravenous administration of nutrients, except where the data are needed to illustrate a particular concept or hypothesis. An extensive body of literature has been developed to explore and apply nutritional repletion by intravenous means. Several journals and many authoritative books are devoted to the subject of enteral (tube) and intravenous feeding (parenteral alimentation or TPN), which has become standard medical procedure.^{2, 26, 2,2, 3, 26, 3,3, 4, 26, 4,4, 5, 26, 5,5, 6, 26, 6,6, 7, 26, 7,7} Since nutritional support by TPN is usually reserved for the severely ill, and not commonly practiced on injured athletes, this book will emphasize nutritional practices that are readily available via oral routes.

This book represents the first comprehensive text on the application of a wide range of nutrients and dietary substances to the enhancement of human healing from injuries and other musculoskeletal conditions. The subject of applying nutrients to enhance healing is enormous, and this book will attempt to concentrate on the effects of nutritional therapies. However, because musculoskeletal healing is complicated and somewhat different from healing of other tissues, brief reviews of the musculoskeletal system and the healing process are necessary to provide the requisite background for understanding the results of therapeutic trials with nutrients.

Guidelines for use of nutritional therapies will be given whenever merited. One goal of this book is to distill conclusions into a clinically useful format. Therefore, it is hoped that this book will have practical applications for those health care providers involved with musculoskeletal healing. With an overwhelming amount of information that is increasing daily, helpful advances often become lost or forgotten. This book will help to resurrect some nutritional therapies that are not fully recognized for their utility.

As always, a stimulation of discussion and research is anticipated by the collection of findings found in the following pages. The ultimate goal of this book is to ease human suffering by casting light upon methods to enhance the human healing process.

B. BRIEF PERSPECTIVE ON THERAPEUTIC USE OF NUTRIENTS

The idea of using nutrients as therapeutic agents in medical practice has met with much resistance in recent times. With the current Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act, nutrients are legally considered foodstuffs, and not drugs. Foodstuffs are not legally drugs, which means that any claims for mitigation, cure, prevention, or treatment of illnesses or disorders involving the human body cannot be made in the U.S., regardless of their veracity. Only drugs can have therapeutic claims attached in their marketing and advertisement. This leaves many nutrients in a modern-day limbo. Since nutrients are classified as foodstuffs, and, therefore, not amenable to patent protection as therapeutic agents (like drugs), there is little economic incentive to pursue research into clinical applications of nutrients as therapeutic agents. If a nutrient is patented for a specific purpose (drug claim), and becomes classified as a drug after millions of dollars spent and years of time, then there is still little protection against consumers buying a similar product that is classified as a food at considerable savings over the drug version. Econo...