Research Says Do This 2 Weeks Before Surgery To Recover Faster
It's easy to feel like things are out of your hands when you have a surgery approaching, but one thing you can control is how you prepare your body before the big day.
A new meta-analysis suggests that what you do in the weeks leading up to surgery may significantly impact how well you recover. They call it "prehabilitation," and found two interventions that were particularly helpful in improving outcomes.
Prehabilitation cut complications by nearly half
Researchers set out to investigate whether exercise and nutrition-based prehabilitation programs actually improve surgical outcomes. To do this, they conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of 23 randomized controlled trials involving 2,182 participants.
The studies, published between 2004 and 2024, evaluated programs that incorporated exercise, nutrition interventions, or both before surgery. The researchers looked at several outcomes: length of hospital stay, complications, quality of life, pain, and mental health.
Patients who participated in exercise or nutrition-based prehabilitation had a 48% lower risk of complications compared to those who received standard care.
When the researchers broke down the interventions by type, they found that five to twelve day nutrition-only programs had a greater impact on hospital stay, reducing it by about a day compared to standard treatment.
Exercise-only programs lasting between two weeks and six months showed meaningful improvements in quality of life measures.
How to prepare your body before your next procedure
While the pre-surgery window is often treated as a passive waiting period, we should be taking advantage of it as a critical health opportunity. Here's how to put this into practice the two-weeks before surgery:
- Talk to your care team: Ask whether a prehabilitation program exists for your procedure. Not every surgery will have a pre-surgery protocol, but the conversation is worth having.
- Focus on what's accessible: You don't need a gym membership or a meal plan. Walking regularly and prioritizing protein intake are simple interventions that align with what the research supports.
- Reframe the waiting period: Instead of viewing the weeks before surgery as something to get through, consider them a chance to actively prepare your body for recovery.
The takeaway
The research suggests that what you do before the procedure may matter as much as the surgery itself. If you have a surgery on the calendar, it's worth asking your doctor whether prehab could help you recover stronger.
And no matter what, don't let the nerves overwhelm you before surgery. Take some time to go on a walk or eat some extra protein. Remember, you have more control over your surgery outcome than you think.