How to Prepare Your Body for Surgery: Protein, Prehab and the 5 Days That Change Your Recovery | Dr. Rebecca Knackstedt

About this episode

Most patients are told one thing before surgery: stop all supplements. Duke surgeon Dr. Rebecca Knackstedt says that blanket advice can do harm, and that what you do in the days before surgery changes how you heal. Dr. Knackstedt is a plastic and reconstructive microsurgeon on faculty at Duke, an MD-PhD researcher and a certified functional medicine provider whose research focuses on surgical prehabilitation: preparing the body, mind, and home before surgery, the way we already do with rehab. In today’s episode, we discuss: • What prehab looks like for any operation • The labs she checks • Which supplements to keep and which to stop (omega-3s do not increase bleeding) • Hormones after breast cancer • Why mammograms still beat thermography • What chemo does to metabolism • The questions to ask your oncologist before a treatment decision • How much protein to eat (no standard exists, and the average woman gets 60 to 70 grams a day, well short of the 100-gram floor) • Why surgery is catabolic and muscle is your reserve • Carbohydrate loading before the fasting cutoff and why it can reduce pain • The five-day window that lowered complications and even mortality in head a