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.