Provide your spine with the nutrients that it needs to heal and function properly, by:
- Get a smoothie blender: Having a smoothie blender standing on the kitchen bench right next to the kettle can be a great trigger to make a nutritious, anti-inflammatory breakfast. Never the less a simple bar mixer will do an equally good job and is probably quicker to clean.
- Get a slow cooker: Using a slow cocker is an easy way to prepare a hearty lunch or dinner well before the busy time of the day hits, it is also a great tool for making bone broth to aid your joint as well as digestive health. Keep it in a visible easy to reach spot to increase your usage.
- Just add water (an arm’s length away): It is important to drink plenty of water to keep your spinal disks well hydrated and flush away inflammation from areas of spinal injury. Keeping a water dispenser at your desk, a water bottle in your hand bag or a pack of water bottles in the garage are all good ways to increase your likelihood of getting your 8 glasses (2L) of water a day.
- Stay on track with a healthy pantry. Clean out pantry of unhealthy/inflammation promoting foods. Pro-inflammatory foods can cause a small niggly injury to blow up to an inferno of inflammation and cause excessive pain, tension and scar tissue that will restrict spinal function. Major contributors to inflammation are alcohol and processed foods that are high in sugar and seed oils. If it is not there then you cannot eat it, so make it easy for yourself to stay on track, by only stocking clean, unprocessed, nutritious snack options.
- Make it easy to access healthy food: An easy way to ensure that you always have access to healthy food is to setup a food delivery service. For example, a weekly or fortnightly fruit and vegetable delivery service could be setup by farmers direct or even your local super market. That way you are less likely to forget your new healthy diet while you running through your normal grocery run. Once you put the vegetables in the fridge put them at eye levelrather than the vegetable draw at the bottom (this simple change in positioning has proven to make people 30% more likely to reach for a vegetable when looking for a snack in the fridge)