Your body needs good food to fuel the healing process. Include foods rich in vitamin C in your diet. The body needs vitamin C to make collagen. Fresh fruits and vegetables eaten daily will also supply your body with other nutrients essential to wound healing such as vitamin A, copper and zinc.
This can include: (1) blood pressure, (2) blood glucose levels, (3) tissue perfusion, (4) oedema management, (5) reinforce medication compliance, (6) offloading, and (7) pressure relief. The rehabilitation professional can provide education on how these factors can affect wound healing.
While it is best to eat a variety of foods to ensure you get all the nutrients you need for wound healing, some good choices include: Foods high in minerals: oysters, spinach, nuts such as cashews, legumes such as peanuts, dairy products, black beans and lentils, bananas, and fish.
Along with its role in collagen synthesis, there is also evidence that vitamin C increases the proliferation of dermal fibroblasts, a function important for wound healing [4].
Vitamin A:
It's one of the most essential nutrients for wound healing since it helps “Control Inflammatory Response”. Vitamin A is required for epithelial and bone tissue development, cellular differentiation, and immune system function. Good sources of Vitamin A include “Squash, Eggs, Kale, carrot and Sweet Potato”.
Wounds heal faster if they are kept warm. Try to be quick when changing dressings. Exposing a wound to the open air can drop its temperature and may slow healing for a few hours. Don't use antiseptic creams, washes or sprays on a chronic wound.
During the healing process, your body's red blood cells carry new cells to the site to begin rebuilding tissue. Poor blood circulation can slow down this process, making the wound that much longer to heal. Chronic conditions, such as diabetes and obesity, can cause poor blood circulation.
Wound healing can be delayed by factors local to the wound itself, including desiccation, infection or abnormal bacterial presence, maceration, necrosis, pressure, trauma, and edema. Desiccation.
Wounds need to be covered so that they can heal properly. When a wound is left uncovered, the new surface cells that are being created can easily dry out. When these important cells dry out, it tends to slow down the healing process. A wound should be covered using a clean bandage.
Debridement. Debridement is the most common treatment for stubborn to heal wounds, and involves the removal of unhealthy tissue within a chronic wound to promote the growth of healthy tissue, reduce complications of infection, and speed up the healing process.
Hyaluronic Acid
Hyaluronic acid also plays a key role in wound healing. Hyaluronic acid helps wounds heal faster by regulating inflammation levels and signaling the body to build more blood vessels in the damaged area.
Blood cells, including oxygen-rich red blood cells, arrive to help build new tissue. Chemical signals instruct cells to create collagen, which serves as a type of scaffolding, and other tissues to begin the repair process.
The factors discussed include oxygenation, infection, age and sex hormones, stress, diabetes, obesity, medications, alcoholism, smoking, and nutrition. A better understanding of the influence of these factors on repair may lead to therapeutics that improve wound healing and resolve impaired wounds.
Zinc plays a major role in regulating every phase of the wound healing process; ranging from membrane repair, oxidative stress, coagulation, inflammation and immune defence, tissue re-epithelialization, angiogenesis, to fibrosis/scar formation.
Whey protein contains all the essential and non-essential amino acids and is an excellent source of glutamine and branched-chain amino acids, which are necessary for cell growth [36]. Thus, whey contains high levels of amino acids that are important for wound healing.
When the skin is injured, a higher amount of vitamin D intake will enhance healing and better outcomes. Additionally, vitamin D promotes the creation of cathelicidin, an antimicrobial peptide the immune system uses to fight off wound infections.
One of the keys to wound healing is collagen, a protein in your body that provides structure and support to your skin, muscles, bones and connective tissues.