How to Prevent Stress Fractures

Stress fractures can prevent us from practising sports for up to eight weeks! Read on to find out how you can prevent them from happening.

In general, when we talk about fractures, people immediately picture a broken leg, a traumatic injury that requires rest, a cast, and months of treatment. However, stress fractures, whilst less serious, can occur comparatively easily. Today, we’ll look at what they are and what steps you can take to prevent them.

Stress fractures

Despite the name, this isn’t what happens when you’re stressed! But the concept is similar.

Our bones have a system through which they eliminate deteriorated bone tissue and replace it with new tissue, regenerating the bone and keeping it strong.

A stress fracture occurs when you regularly put the bone under more load than it’s capable of withstanding and it can’t regenerate fast enough. These constant efforts build up and eventually the bone fractures, usually without displacement.

If you then have an X-ray, you’ll see the fracture as a barely visible fine line. But it’s still a serious injury and it’ll stop you from playing sports for several weeks. So, just like the stress of everyday life, if you don’t rest enough, it will end up taking its toll.

Lack of nutrients and repetitive stress

Given how a stress fracture occurs, there are two possible reasons that this can happen. One is that you might have a lack of nutrients. Bones need calcium and also need Vitamin D so that the calcium can be absorbed properly.

There are also plenty of other vitamins, minerals, proteins, iron, and other elements that you need to consider. It’s also worth considering osteoporosis. Ultimately, if you don’t have enough of the right nutrients, your bones won’t regenerate properly and will be more susceptible to stress fractures.

Aside from these nutritional factors, stress fractures can also happen as a result of repeatedly putting the bone under force over a long period of time. So, although you might have enough calcium to regenerate the bone, you’re not giving your body enough time to do so.

This could be because you’ve suddenly increased the intensity of your exercise regime. Maybe you’re not performing an activity correctly, putting your bones under unnecessary strain. Or maybe you’ve just not gradually adapted your body to a particular workload.

One other thing that’s worth mentioning is muscle decompensation. This is where muscles aren’t working correctly because they’re compensating for another muscle that isn’t in good condition.

Treatment

If you’ve suffered a stress fracture and it’s not severe, then treatment will mainly involve resting. This will allow the bone to heal and the fracture to fill with new tissue. Depending on the bone that you’ve injured, you may need a cast to keep it still.

Additionally, you might have to take anti-inflammatories and apply ice to the area to control inflammation. It’s always best to avoid medication if you can, but if you need it, it won’t hinder your recovery.

After this, you may need some physiotherapy, which will consist of exercises to help the bones to heal, reduce pain, or strengthen the muscles. It can take between six to eight weeks for the bone to fully recover.

If it’s a particularly problematic bone injury or if the fracture causes displacement or risk to other tissues, you may require surgery. In any case, you should see a doctor early on to rule this out.

How to prevent stress fractures

Here’s a shortlist of ways that you can help prevent stress fractures:

• Make sure that you’re moving correctly. Poor movement when playing sports can increase the risk of many bone, muscle, and joint problems.
• Use appropriate equipment. If you’re a runner, for example, you should make sure that you wear appropriate footwear. If the equipment is old, you need to make sure that you can still use it properly and safely.

• Take care of your workload. This is essential and applies both to the intensity of your training sessions and the amount of rest you take between each one. It’s really important to give the body time to rest, especially if you’re increasing your workload.
• Strengthening the muscles will help absorb the exercise load and remove the stress from the bone and soft tissues.

Last but not least, diet is important. If your bones don’t have all the nutrients they need, they won’t be able to fully recover.