During exercise, the muscle protein in the areas of your body being worked hard breaks down: you need protein in your diet so your muscles can repair this damage. This is how you get stronger, faster and fitter! Great sources of protein include chicken, steak, fish, and eggs. The proportions of carbs and protein you should be adding to your diet depend on your exercise level, your weight, age and other factors.

Having both carbohydrates and protein an hour or two before your exercise, and half an hour after a workout, can help to prevent injuries. You can do this through your diet or choose to use a supplement. Many athletes choose shakes and other supplements to ensure they are getting exactly the right amount of carbs and protein.

Both calcium and vitamin D help to keep your bones strong, reducing the risk of stress injuries from hard workouts. You can get calcium from low-fat diary foods like milk, cheese or yogurt.

Foods like cheese, egg yolks and fatty fish are great sources of vitamin D. You could also choose to take a supplement. These fats help cells in your body to repair themselves, reduce inflammation, provide energy and keep bones, ligaments and tendons lubricated to make movement easier.

Essential fats can come from foods such as nuts, oils and fish. Vitamins C and E provide antioxidants, which help to prevent damage to the cells in your body. Vitamin C helps with tissue repair, wound healing, and maintaining your immune system among other functions.

Vitamin E plays an important role in protecting tissues and organs within your body from damage. Last but not least, remember to hydrate! Ensuring your body has enough water is just as important as what you eat. The more exercise you do, the more you sweat, which means you need more water!

When injuries do occur, nutrition can play a vital role in helping you recover quicker and more effectively! It helps to protect us and starts to repair damage. The key to combatting this nutritionally is reducing foods which contribute to inflammation and increasing foods which reduce inflammation.

Fruits, vegetables and healthy fats help to reduce inflammation. Foods high in vitamin C can be extremely helpful for injury recovery. Make sure you are eating plenty of fruits and vegetables. Zinc has many vital roles in our bodies including keeping our immune system functioning well and aiding in injury and wound repair.

You can get Zinc from foods like red meat, brown nice and lentils. Calcium keeps our bones strong and helps them to repair themselves, so eating foods which are high in calcium can be particularly useful for fractures and other bone injuries. Foods which are high in calcium include cheese, yogurt and milk.

Iron helps our bodies to produce blood cells and a protein called collagen. Collagen is essentially the glue which holds our bodies together, providing the structure for our bones, muscles, tendons and skin.

You can see why it would be vital for injury repair! Foods like red meat, eggs and fish are high in iron content. Both magnesium and potassium help to keep our nerves and muscles are working properly.

Magnesium also helps with bone formation. Foods like nuts, legumes, whole grains and seeds among others are great for magnesium and potassium consumption. A vital role of vitamin D is to help store minerals in your bones, keeping them strong and helping them recover.

This vitamin also helps your blood to absorb calcium. Fatty fish, diary products, cheese, and egg yolks are some great vitamin D sources. Make sure you do your research and consult a medical professional before adding any new supplement to your diet.

Take your time to figure out what diet is right for you! It can help athletes defend and recover from concussions, and enables muscles to react faster.

They also help synthesize stronger muscles and prevent muscle loss , which in turn helps you hold away fatigue longer and prevent overuse injury. Unfortunately, our bodies cannot produce Omega-3 on its own, and as such is dependent on our diet for adequate intake of the healthy fatty acid.

Athletes can hit the daily recommended daily dose by eating fatty fish such as mackerel, salmon, and herring. However, supplements can be just as effective, as seafood may not be easily accessible for some. Adequate calcium levels can help athletes , especially those in sports with a high incidence of bone overuse injuries and stress fractures such as running and soccer.

Getting enough calcium is especially beneficial for women, with a study finding a direct correlation between adequate intake and preventing fractures. Athletes looking to increase calcium levels should take milk and milk products such as cheese, whey, and yogurt. Those with lactose intolerance can introduce non-dairy sources of calcium like winged beans or chia seeds to their diet, instead.

Athletes, especially women and those trying to maintain a weight class, may not be eating enough due to strict dietary limitations. ACL tears occur during pivots or twists, and having weak knee muscles can increase your risk for ligament injuries.

Meeting your caloric needs also helps your body retain muscle mass. This means that it starts breaking down your muscles in an effort to get the energy you need. Weaker muscles can lead to increased risk for overuse injuries.

Want to pivot your diet towards keeping you injury free? At the Dr. Andrew Dutton Orthopaedic and Sports Clinic, Dr. Dutton can work with you to find a diet regimen that can meet your unique needs. He is also a Clinical Orthopaedic Fellow at Harvard Medical School.

George Hospital, Sydney, before completing his orthopaedic surgery training in Singapore. He is currently an associate professor of orthopaedic surgery at the National University of Singapore NUS.

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Home Can Your Diet Help Prevent Sports Injuries? Can Your Diet Help Prevent Sports Injuries? Contents 1 A blueberry a day keeps the inflammation away 2 Collagen 3 Vitamin D, a common deficiency 4 Fish are friends, and food 5 Got milk?

You should 6 Make sure your diet meets your energy needs. Fish are friends, and food Omega-3 is a type of polyunsaturated fatty acid that comes packed with many health benefits. Got milk? Make sure your diet meets your energy needs Athletes, especially women and those trying to maintain a weight class, may not be eating enough due to strict dietary limitations.

This article was written for the Sport Science Institute by SCAN Registered Dietitians RDs. For advice on customizing an eating plan for injury prevention or after injury, consult an RD who specializes in sports, particularly a Board Certified Specialist in Sports Dietetics CSSD.

Find a SCAN RD at www. Tipton KD. Nutrition for Acute Exercise-Induced Injuries. Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism. Sports, Cardiovascular, and Wellness Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group, Rosenbloom C, Coleman E. Sports Nutrition: A Practice Manual for Professionals , 5 th edition.

Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: Rauh, MJ, Nichols JF and Barrack MT. Relationship Among Injury and Disordered Eating, Menstrual Dysfunction, and Low Bone Mineral Density in High School Athletes: A Prospective Study. Journal of Athletic training. Cowell BS, Rosenbloom CA, Skinner R, Sumers SH.

Policies on screening female athletes for iron deficiency in NCAA Division I-A institutions. Int J Sports NutrExercMetab. Chen, Yin-Ting, Tenforde, Adam and Fredericson, Michael. Update on Stress Fractures in Female Athletes: Epidemiology, Treatment, and Prevention.

Curr Rev Musculoslel Med Dietary strategies to attenuate muscle loss during recovery from injury. Nestle NutrInst Workshop Ser. The use of software that blocks ads hinders our ability to serve you the content you came here to enjoy. We ask that you consider turning off your ad blocker so we can deliver you the best experience possible while you are here.

Here are the specifics on how to eat for optimal recovery and healing while preventing weight gain: · Focus on energy balance. Ad Blocker Detected. Thanks for visiting! Thank you for your support! Learn More About Ad Blockers. Players who are under-fueled or more likely to sprain an ankle.

Stress fractures will also happen if an athlete is low in Vitamin D and calcium stores. Athletes need proper vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates and protein to stay healthy to help protect the tendons, ligaments and bones.

Lora : Proper nutrition is also needed to recover and repair the body from injury. When athletes don't get enough carbohydrates, the body uses protein for fuel, which prevents wounds from healing.

All those microscopic tears in the muscle don't heal and it will continue to get worse. Lora : What I always tell my athletes is nutrition is just as important as practice and skill development - it all goes together.

It's just as important to plan and prep nutrition and eat healthy, as it is to practice your sport and get better. I'm not going to tell someone to make eggs if they won't eat eggs. An athlete will not get to where they want to be if they don't have healthy nutrition in their body.

Nutrition is the one magic bullet to help improve performance. Learn more about nutrition for injury recovery in athletes. Sports and Nutrition: How to Prevent Injury and Improve Performance.

Teens playing soccer. Teenage soccer player making an effort while running with soccer ball during a match against her opponents. Do athletes in different sports have different nutrition needs? What is proper fueling? What carbohydrates should athletes be eating?