Hi, my name is Bret Sarnquist, I’m one of the wellness dietitians here at Tahoe Forest Health System. And today we’re going to be talking a little bit about orthopedic nutrition, so nutrition before an orthopedic surgery.
One of the big questions we get on this is, why are we talking about nutrition? Orthopedic surgery should be pretty simple, right? You go in, you go out. Actually, the nutrition side of things is a really important way to prepare for it. And so your orthopedic nutrition team has asked that you meet with the dietitian and go to some classes, in order to kind of improve your nutrition before your surgery.
So what do these classes entail? There’s going to be four classes, a series of four classes on Zoom, and you can join them kind of at any point during the cycle of classes. It’s one every week, and it just repeats, so you can join whenever you have time.
So, what are we going to cover, and why is it important? First of all, I think one thing that people don’t realize about orthopedic surgery is that it’s a huge stress on the body. It’s been compared to running a marathon, and I don’t think anyone would actually go and run a marathon without making sure that their muscles were tuned up, and that they’ve been fueling well and their bodies were ready to go for it. Your body gets really depleted after surgery, and in order to make sure that it doesn’t get too depleted, and make sure you have lower rates of infection and simpler surgeries and you recover faster, if you go in with really good nutrition status, when you come out, everything kind of heals more quickly, and you’re out of the hospital faster and you move on with your life.
When you attend these classes, we’re going to cover kind of some of the basics about nutrition. We’re going to cover micronutrition, macronutrients. We’re going to cover all the information you need to know about the anti-inflammatory foods that help you heal. And then we’re going to cover a little bit about protein and how to spread some of those macronutrients out over the course of a day, to maximize the way your body uses them and can actually metabolize them in order to support your health.
Again, it’s four Wednesdays in a row. Classes are usually about 45 minutes, I leave some time for questions and answers, and so it can vary a little bit. All done on Zoom. It’s not a requirement, but highly recommended. And, you know, the saying that we always have is that with good nutrition, you heal better and you feel better.
My name is Bret Sarnquist, one of the wellness dietitians, and thank you for watching.
