Among the best ways to improve recovery time following surgery is to plan your next hiking trip - and plan it outdoors at that!Getting outside exposes people to more sunlight, which offers a myriad of benefits. Among them, a study shows, is taking less pain medicine. Post-op patients who received 46 percent more sunlight than their counterparts used about 22 percent less medication per hour.
Besides feeling less pain, patients exposed to sunlight also slept better, which further aided the healing process. Ultimately, those patients suffered less of a decline in their ability to perform their daily pre-op activities.
The results support an older study showing that patients who had rooms with views of trees tended to recover faster than those with views of brick walls.
Learn about trail guidebooks available in the Hittin’ the Trail series.
