Whilst exercising regularly is vital for keeping your body healthy and in good shape, when you pull a muscle or get hurt, it can be a little annoying. Especially when it affects your ability to get around.
Although most sports injuries don’t take too long to heal, they can be irritating and painful. Especially when you don’t know the best way to treat them. Instead of turning to your local chemist, why not give natural treatments a try?
For our guide to drug free treatments for sports injuries, keep reading below:
Heat & Ice Therapy
One of the best natural treatments for sports injuries is heat and ice therapy.
When an injury first occurs it is a good idea to apply an ice pack to it, make sure to wrap the ice pack in towel first though. For best results, ice should be placed on the injury within 10 minutes of it happening and should be kept on there for up to half an hour.
Ice will help to prevent or reduce swelling and will reduce the pain by numbing the area it is applied to. By reducing the swelling, ice can also help to stop the affected area from going stiff.
After 48 hours of the injury occurring, heat can then start to be used. Heat can be applied to the injury via a microwavable wheat bag, hot water bottle, heat pads, or via deep heat cream.
Heat will help to aid the healing process by dilating the blood vessels, bringing more blood to the injury, stimulating any damaged tissues and helping them to heal quicker. Applying heat will also soothe the area, help to reduce the amount of pain and ease any stiffness by making the tissues looser.
Many people find that applying a combination of heat and ice is very effective in reducing injury pain and speeding up the healing process.
Vitamins & Minerals
Some vitamins and minerals, such as vitamin C can aid the healing process, speeding it up. To help speed up your healing period it is vital that you get lots of vitamin C into your body, either through supplements or diet.
Oranges, kale, guavas, peppers, kiwi, and broccoli, among others, are all foods that are rich in vitamin C.
Other important vitamins for speeding up healing are vitamin A, zinc and vitamin E, they are also important for their antioxidant effects.
Natural Anti-Inflammatory’s
As well as reducing inflammation externally, you can also reduce it and relieve pain by taking certain herbs and natural remedies internally. Rosemary, ginger and turmeric, and aloe vera are all excellent natural anti-inflammatory’s.
Turmeric contains something called curcumin, which studies have suggested, can reduce swelling as effectively as certain prescription medicines. It isn’t a good idea to eat turmeric on its own, instead stir it into pasta dishes, soups and stew and make sure to eat four teaspoons a day, until the swelling subsides.
Ginger and rosemary also contain similar properties. For best results make a cup of fresh ginger tea or soak in a ginger and rosemary bath.
Aloe vera also has anti-inflammatory properties which studies have suggest can aid healing and reduce inflammation. Aloe vera can be taken internally to help reduce swelling and pain, for best results what you need to do is take 90 ml of aloe vera gel each day.
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