Caring for Your Skin After Surgery
Each year,thousands of adult males across the United States are diagnosed with breast cancer. While early stages may be treated with chemotherapy, radiation, or with proton therapy, many cancer survivors undergo surgery to rid themselves of tumors. This can lead to scarring if you don’t take proper precautions during your recovery period. With
a little bit of care, you can keep your skin looking and feeling its best after a mastectomy.
Eat Right
To assist your cancer treatment in being successful, it’s important that you eat right to help your body repair itself. You need plenty of protein to maintain muscle mass, fiber to support healthy digestion, and nutrients to help prevent oxidative damage to cells.Eating a balanced diet will also help your skin to heal quickly and efficiently after surgery. Vitamin C and vitamin E both help to protect body tissues and prevent infection by strengthening the immune system. Vitamin A also helps skin to maintain its elasticity by restoring damaged collagen. You can ensure that you get all the nutrients that you need as you heal by eating a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Omega-3 fatty acids can also help skin to heal smoothly after surgery. These healthy fats help to maintain the tissues underneath your skin, keeping it looking taut. Eating fish and other seafood increases your omega-3 intake, helping to prevent scarring. Including seafood in your diet is also beneficial to your cognitive health, as omega-3 fatty acids are an important part of your brain structure.
Exercise
Like eating right,exercising regularly offers a myriad of benefits for your skin. After surgery, you should talk to your doctor about starting a light exercise routine. This will help to keep your muscles strong and your skin firm. Be careful not to overexert yourself however. An intense workout can cause stress to your cardiac and respiratory systems after surgery and may end up causing damage to healing muscle or stitches.
Moisturize
It’s important to start or maintain a daily skincare regimen after any type of reconstructive surgery. If you’ve had a mastectomy, you may find that the tissue around your chest feels dry as you heal. You should make an effort to keep skin clean and moisturized using gentle cosmetics. While it may be tempting to look for products containing collagen and retinol, these can be irritating in their topical form. It’s best to stick to simple,natural products that include vitamin E and other topical products specifics for scars. Coconut Oil is another great option as the oils include mostly triglycerides and medium chain fatty acids which help to product collagen and aid in producing healthy skin.
While the scars from reconstructive surgery may never heal, you can take steps to help keep your skin looking healthy. By eating right, exercising, and maintaining a proper skincare routine, you can actively work to avoid severe scarring after a mastectomy.