Most patients think hard about the best way to recover their health and to accelerate the healing process.

This verb noun collocation – recover health – is very weak. Let’s take a look at the two words separately.

Recover + noun

The strongest collocation for recover + noun seems to be associated with money:

• Apple invested heavily in the iPhone but soon recovered their research and development costs.
• Fraud victims find it difficult to recover their money.
• The state’s Consumer Protection Assistance Fund (CPAF) can help victims, who have filed complaints with our office, recover their losses.

Verb + health

Meanwhile, verb + health gives us:

• Most people make an effort to improve their health.
• regular exercise and a balanced diet can help to maintain good health.
• I’m quite concerned about my uncle’s health.

Recover (no object)

In the context of health, recover is usually intransitive:

• I hope your uncle recovers quickly.
• If you take this medicine you will recover in a few days.
• You had a bad fall. You need some time to recover.

Summary

Returning to our opening example, either of the following are possible:

• Most patients think hard about the best way to recover and to accelerate the healing process.
• Most patients think hard about the best way to improve their health and to accelerate the healing process.