Recovery Diet from Procedures

This podcast episode provides a comprehensive guide on how to prepare for and recover from a medical procedure. The goal throughout is to support your body's natural healing processes through proper nutrition, hydration, rest, and targeted supplementation.

Transcript

(00:10):

You are thinking about having a procedure done or you need to have a procedure done and you want to be in the best shape possible going into the procedure and having the best recovery possible. Hi, I'm Julia. I'm the founder of Jolie, and today we're going to discuss how to set yourself up for the best recovery possible. And this can be a recovery from a surgery that is quite minor. This can be recovery from plastic surgery, and this can be recovery from a procedure that you need for whatever reason. Having proper nutrition prior to recovery is so important. So if this is a procedure that you can plan out, I say give yourself four to six weeks of really, really tight nutrition and I'm going to describe to you what that looks like. Next, we will talk about what to do the day of the few days post procedure as well as two weeks post procedure.
(01:16)
It is very, very important that you really prepare yourself for your procedure and for the time after your procedure. This will help you to recover faster, to need much, much less pain medication, less anti-inflammatory medication, and will help you get on your feet and have the best results possible. So let's talk about what you should be eating prior to a procedure. Prior to procedure, it is obvious, although not always thought about that you would take out things in your diet that would put you into a negative space. And so this means beginning to cut back on your alcohol consumption. This means definitely ending any nicotine use, whether it's through an e-cigarette, whether it is through a patch, gum, whatever, nicotine restricts blood flow and is very, very harmful in the process of recovery and really makes it hard for your soft tissues, your skin to recover from the trauma of surgery.
(02:36)
So you're definitely taking out all nicotine. You're definitely cutting back on alcohol and you're cutting back on sugars because sugars are, of course we need sugar. However, it is rather toxic in large quantities. And so we are trying to put our bodies in the best place possible going into a procedure. So what do you eat? You eat lots of fiber rich foods here. We are trying to get your gut in the best spot possible because during your procedure, the medications that you'll take, the anesthesia that you'll take will and possible antibiotics will disrupt your gut microbiome. Therefore, we want to go into the procedure with the healthiest gut microbiome we can possibly have and with very regular elimination. So as we add in more fiber rich foods like broccoli and kale and spinach and apples with their skin on and cucumbers and tomatoes and all of those lovely rich fibrous vegetables, fruits, whole grains, we are feeding our gut microbiome.
(03:58)
We are making sure that we have some kind of probiotic food every day. Maybe it's a tablespoon of yogurt, maybe it's a little bit of kimchi, maybe it's some old fashioned pickles, but we are really feeding our gut microbiome. In the same vein, we are making sure that we are staying hydrated. That is important for your regular elimination, which is what we want before you go into a procedure. And your hydration also will help your body function better the days prior to your procedure. You don't want to over hydrate and I will stress that, but you want to begin a process of constant keeping yourself rehydrated, keeping yourself drinking your water for the four to six weeks prior to your procedure. We want to make sure that we are giving our bodies prior procedure. This is very important that protein on hand. And in terms of your protein consumption, we want your body to be in the best possible state because you are going to have rest and recovery time.
(05:16)
This means that you are working out, you are building muscle, you are doing your cardio, and you're supplying your body with all the amino acids it needs to create the muscle that you're working out to have. This muscle is going to carry you through recovery and put you in a very healthy space once your recovery is over. Antioxidants are another important part of our pre-procedure diet because they help boost our immune system, they help boost all of our healing pathways. They help our body to function at optimal efficiency, which if you haven't noticed, the key to your pre-procedure routine is optimization of you. You are getting yourself in the best place possible, the healthiest, most robust place possible. And for that you need antioxidants that are found in fruits and vegetables. Think of color, you want avocado, you want leafy greens. You want plenty of vegetables that are red and orange like peppers and winter squash and carrots and beets, all of those things.
(06:37)
You want a lot of that you will be getting most of your vitamins through your food because before your procedure, about two to four weeks, depending on your doctor, you're going to cut out many of your antioxidant supplements. So you're going to cut out your vitamin C, you're going to cut out your vitamin E, you're going to cut out your fish oils, you're cutting out these supplements because they can cause excessive bleeding during the procedure. And one thing that we don't want is excessive bleeding because not only does that make the procedure more difficult, but it also causes more bruising, which we don't want. Bruising also creates more swelling, things that will make your recovery slower. It will make the initial 48 to 72 hours after your procedure more painful. So we take those things out and your doctor, I'm not your doctor, this is not medical advice, talk to your doctor about everything but my experience, they will ask you to stop these supplements prior to surgery and you should stop them.
(07:56)
Instead, you're getting your nutrition through your food, which is how it's supposed to be, and it will not interfere with how your body recovers. So that is your pre-procedure diet. One thing that I omitted was the need for healthy fats. So you want to make sure you have avocado in there, you have ALS in there. You have unsalted nuts and seeds, you have chia, almonds, walnuts, cashews, Brazil nuts, things that are going to give you magnesium, things that are going to give you lots of healthy fat for your cells. Your cells are made out of fat, so you need that. You're going to have flax seed and hemp and sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds. And when I say to include all of these nuts and seeds, I'm not saying to eat huge quantities of them. These are supercharged seeds. Seeds in nature are densely packed with nutrition because a seed is going to have to support the growth of a plant.
(09:06)
So you don't need much of these. So we're talking about one to two tablespoons here on a daily basis. You can sprinkle them over your food. You could do what Jolie does, which we use them as sprinkle, but we also use them to make our dressing so that you have a deeper nutrition than you would ordinarily have. We also use small, like a tablespoon of nuts or seeds to add crunch variety as well as nutrition in. So that is something that should be done. Pre-procedure, the joli diet is perfect pre-procedure diet. So looking at that, you have a good model of what you need as it relates to your body composition and your weight if you can. It is best to be close to your ideal weight when you go through a procedure and particularly if it is a plastic surgery procedure that is super important.
(10:05)
And so in that process, you want to make sure that you are eating protein rich foods, lots of fruits and vegetables, and you're minimizing your sugars, you're minimizing your carbs, you're minimizing processed food, ideally eliminating it completely. And when you do have carbohydrates, you want your carbohydrates. And I'm not counting vegetables and fruits in here. You want your grains to count. So you want to opt for things that are very, very nutrient dense like oat groats or wheat berries or sweet potatoes. You want things that offer you more than just straight carbohydrate. You're trying to get as much as possible. And in this time period, this is a great time to begin if you haven't already. And if you don't, include this in your regular diet to begin to put in more turmeric and ginger and spices and herbs, those are very potent anti-inflammatories for your body.
(11:16)
They're very potent tonics that help your body rebalance itself. Many of the tonics like turmeric and ginger, you will be asked to not take in supplementation or not take in tea prior to your procedure, particularly ginger, for the same reasons that most likely I'm not your doctor, but most likely your doctor will ask you to stop supplements like vitamin C and vitamin E and the like for the same reason. However, putting a little fresh turmeric in your stir fry is usually not a problem. Obviously check with your doctor, but in the six week lead up to include herbs and spices in your diet will put you in a better space. So you're mainly aiming for a Jolie esque diet of 80% fruits and vegetables, variety, variety, variety, color, color, color. You are avoiding things that you know are sensitive to. So if you're sensitive to dairy, you are avoiding that.
(12:31)
You are exiting out of eating junk food, eating processed food, eating white flour. If you're eating grains, you are eating whole grains, only plenty of fish, no refined sugars, no alcohol, and you are going to walk and build muscle and exercise and sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep so that you can be in the best shape possible. And sleep is important. I put that in there because you want to go in strong and giving your body seven to eight hours of sleep a night helps you to go in strong. So what do we do in the days ramping up to our procedure? There are some supplements that I recommend. Again, I'm not your doctor, clear everything with your doctor prior to your surgery. And the first of that is arnica. Arnica is a wonderful homeopathic. I use the homeopathic kind homeopathic supplement to help reduce bruising and bleeding during a procedure.
(13:48)
And this is true of all procedures. This is true of a dental procedure. This is true of a tummy talk. This is true of a hip replacement. Arnica helps you to not bruise as badly as you could and for there not to be excessive bleeding. And the protocol for arnica is distorted a few days prior to your procedure. Take it every two hours the day of your procedure and you're upping the dose at that point. And then the 72 hours post procedure, you are at a higher dose and more frequent use of arnica, which then gets tapered off to the standard dose for the two weeks post procedure. You will find if you use Arnica in this way, it is magnificent and reducing your bruising and reducing swelling and bleeding. Also, the other supplement that is exceptional in that is broma line. It is a derivative of pineapple and it helps to prevent bruising also.
(15:04)
And the dosage for that is usually 250 milligrams three times a day. And you can begin taking it pre-surgery like a week, two weeks before the day of. If you're not fasting, if you're fasting, which most likely you are, you're not taking anything. You can continue to take the arnica though because it's sublingual and it will not get in the way of anything. But again, check with your doctor and then post-surgery, you continue taking the Brom Moline for two weeks afterwards. This will greatly reduce your bruising, greatly reduce swelling, greatly accelerate your healing process. And the other supplement that is recommended is vitamin K. A lot of people are deficient in vitamin K with our American agriculture here. Vitamin K is another factor that's involved in allowing your blood to clot properly, so it helps you to not bleed as much as you could bleed.
(16:13)
And so if you have a vitamin K deficiency, which that can be tested with a blood test, it's a great idea to take vitamin K pre procedure. So, and also vitamin K is topical too. So post procedure, you can take it orally too and you can also apply it topically if you have any bruising on your skin. Arnica two, you should definitely take it sublingual that's under the tongue. But you can also take arnica gels and apply them around your incision areas once you're cleared to do so by your doctor to avoid bruising and to help bruising to dissipate more quickly. So we have done our pre-procedure diet. We are in the best shape of our lives. We have our supplements that are approved by a doctor dialed in. We are ready. What else do we need to think about? And we need to think about rest and recovery.
(17:15)
That is now the most important thing on your plate. The more you rest, and I cannot tell you this enough, and this is true of if you are pregnant and you're about to have a baby, this is true. If you have a c-section, this is true. If you have any kind of procedure, surgery, whatever, you have to carve out time for you to rest here. The old adage of slow is fast or slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. This is the golden rule of recovery. The more slowly you take it, the more you just allow yourself to rest, to be cared for, to do nothing, the smoother your recovery will be. And a smooth recovery equals a fast recovery if at all possible, you are hopefully staying in a place where you can be really well cared for. My favorite thing is to literally stay in a hotel because no one bothers you.
(18:24)
Your family, they love you, but they're not there to bother you. It is time for you just to sleep and recover, which those first 48 hours, that's literally all you should be doing. This is true of any type of procedure. You go through the first 48 hours. You just need to be resting. You need to be resting and hydrating, resting and hydrating, resting and hydrating. Another tool that I or hack that I did post pregnancy is I literally stayed in my nightgown for weeks. Weeks. I did that because it was a visual cue to myself that I'm in recovery and it was a visual cue to everyone else that I am in recovery. So it's really, really important that we set ourselves up to not be disturbed, to be cared for, to be in recovery. This is not the time to be, oh, I don't need anything.
(19:30)
I don't want to bother anyone. People want to help you. People love to help you. People feel good about themselves when they help you. So it's important during this time that you allow yourself to receive. Think of if the shoe was on the opposite foot, would you feel good about yourself helping a loved one or a friend who just had a procedure? Yes, you would feel good about yourself. Yes, you would want to do that. Yes, that would give you joy. So accept help, accept help, accept help, accept help, and make it clear that you are in recovery. Clear your schedule. Tell people if you get, let me drink some water here. If you get overwhelmed with people trying to help you, ask a key person to be the triage nurse of all the people who want to help you and accept the help, but have it managed by someone else.
(20:39)
And speaking of triage nurse, it is not a bad idea to hire someone to help you post procedure post post-birth. That way you have a dedicated person who is taking care of you and a person who is very, very skilled in caring for people. This too will be an accelerator to your recovery. So the key takeaways for your first 48 72 hours is let yourself receive help. Your only job is to rest and to hydrate. Allow people to triage the help that is offered. Get professional help if you can and have your food lined up. I didn't really talk on that, but have your food lined up. And post procedure, I love liquidy foods. So broth packs, chicken, bone broth, that's going to help you rebuild yourself. Soups, smoothies with protein and collagen. I love food like that. You're thinking warm foods. You're thinking foods that are easy to digest, particularly, particularly your first 24 hours.
(21:49)
And then you begin to add in other foods. Here again, we do not want hospital type food because it is nutrient poor. Have you seen what they're serving there? It's terrible. You want nutrient rich foods and then you can move on to cooked foods that are easier to digest, like Irish oats or sauteed spinach or fish, things of that sort. And then you add in the heavier foods or the foods that are harder to digest. It's important that you keep yourself well hydrated because post procedures, it's oftentimes very difficult to go to the bathroom because your medications have slowed everything down. So staying hydrated is important. Soups, particularly parade soups like Jolee, we excel in the parade. Soups are great because they're easy for you to take. They're easy for you to digest, and they have the fiber in them, which is something that you need.
(22:53)
I am a fan of taking stool softeners preemptively after procedure, as well as the old fashioned mineral oil that's meant to be a laxative. You do not want to be uncomfortable because you can't go to the bathroom and you don't want any straining when you need to go to the bathroom, and it just makes the whole thing horrible. So you want to prepare yourself ahead of time, ahead of feeling constipated ahead, of feeling full ahead, of feeling like you can't go to the bathroom by hydrating, using a stool softener, old fashioned mineral oil and high fiber foods that are easy to digest to help keep your bathroom habits quite regular and to help keep you comfortable. So we have covered the 24 to 72 hours after your procedure, you're resting, you are preparing yourself to go to the bathroom. You're hydrating, you're eating nutrient dense foods, you're taking your arnica, you're taking your brome, and you are taking your vitamin K if necessary.
(24:08)
You are doing well. Now, here is the next portion and the next portion is oftentimes the hardest because if you've done the pre-work really well and you've rested super well the first 72 hours, you're feeling pretty darn good right now and you've been taking your meds, you're feeling pretty darn good right now. And so the temptation is to get up and do or to think, oh, I can do just a little bit of that. No, no, no, no, no. Your first two weeks, you're still in recovery mode. Okay, so we're going to just stay there. The thing that's changing in those two weeks is with your doctor's approval, you're going to start walking. You're going to start moving around and we're just talking strolls. We're not talking exercise here. We're talking strolls. We're talking Guinea on the bed and walking around. If that's walking around your house, it's walking around your house.
(25:06)
If it's walking up and down your driveway, it's walking up and down your driveway. You're walking, you're hydrating, you're doing as much of that as your doctor allows. And as your body allows and depending on your procedure as your procedure allows, and then you are eating and you're going back to that diet that you had pre-procedure. So we're going back to the high fiber, high vegetable, 80% vegetable fruit, good lean protein, wonderful nuts and seeds for healthy fats, avocado, olive oil, olives. We're going back to that diet. Lots of collagen, whether that is through collagen supplements, whether that's through chicken bone broth, whether that is through something else in my mind as related to collagen. Your smoothies, you're having lots of collagen. This is all going to help your body recover super fast, help you feel super energized. You're sleeping, you're taking the medication you're supposed to be taking at this point, you're usually weaned off of any pain medication and instead you're on a cycle ibuprofen and acetaminophen.
(26:20)
So that's like Advil and Tylenol. You're doing that regularly until your pain, your swelling, your inflammation from your procedure has subsided and then you're tapering that again, you're asking your doctor about all this because there are some contra indications based on your clotting ability, your liver health, all of that, you're hydrating. So one thing to remember in terms of your recovery is when you have a procedure, there are lots of things pumped into your body to help you manage the procedure. There's anesthesia, there are fluids, there are electrolytes, there are all of those things. There are medications. Those things need to get filtered out of your body. And so part of why we're eating well and we are hydrating so well and we are avoiding toxic things is because we're helping our body to detoxify from the surgery. We are supporting our natural processes so that they can run most efficiently.
(27:25)
When we do that, we are going to feel our best ever. So this in the podcast on recovery, there is a lot of information there. There are new nuances depending on if you're recovering from a plastic surgery procedure, whether you're recovering from birthing a child or a C-section or whether there is a different procedure. So there is some fine tuning to be done based on what you're recovering from. I would love to hear your thoughts. If you have further questions, please contact us. I'd love to be in contact with people. So email us at Julia at the Jo Life and check out our website, the jo life.com. So please share this. If this has helped you, please like us. Please subscribe, please do all the things and have a beautiful day. I hope you enjoyed this podcast, the Jo Life Podcast. And if this podcast helped you in any way, I invite you to share it with your friends and your family and whoever you come across that you think might be helped by this podcast. I would love to hear your comments. And you can contact me at julia@thejolife.com and please follow us on Instagram, the Jo Life. Our website is the jolie life.com. And it would be lovely if you would subscribe and if you would rate this podcast and go back and share this with someone. Let the ripple effect happen. Let the Jolie life be the beautiful life that keeps on giving by beauty. Lots of love.