Monday, April 23, 2012

Bones Stronger When They Heal

Your bones play a very important role in pre-forming everyday tasks. They are made of hard components to support your body as well as your vital organs. Your bones have the ability to bend but only in a limited degree. However, when too much pressure is on it, bones can break or snap. There are a lot of instances in which you can break your bone like when you fall from a tree or smashing into a moving car.
A fracture is a condition in which a bone is broken. However, there is more than one way to break or fracture a bone. When a bone is totally broken into two, it is called a complete fracture. When a bone cracks halfway through, it is called a greenstick fracture. A single fracture happens when a bone is broken only in one place. When the bone is broken into more than two pieces, it is called a comminuted fracture. In children, when the bone bends but does not break, it is called a bowling fracture. There is also an open fracture when the bone is sticking through the skin.
When fractures happen, the doctors would make use of an X-ray so they can see which bones are to set back to their positions. Then the bones would heal naturally. The fractured part will produce new bone cells as well as blood vessels to rebuild the damaged bone. The cells would cover up the broken part of the bone until it is as good as new.
You may have heard that broken bones become stronger when they are healed. Though bones can get stronger under pressure, this is only true up to some point. Athletes develop greater bone mass after trainings which they need to perform well on their games. However, there is no such proof that when a broken bone heals, it would be stronger than it was before the fracture happens.
The process of bone recovery after a fracture is truly a remarkable process in which the fractured area becomes stronger than the bone surrounding it. This is because calcium is concentrated on that part for rebuilding purposes. The plaster cast is also worn to protect the fractured area only. And since there is no pressure on the surrounding bones, they become relatively weaker during the healing process. However, when you use your arm or your leg later after the bone has finally recovered, the fractured area before and the surrounding bones will reach equal strength already. The place of the fracture have the same chances of being broken again just like any bone in your body. In tests conducted with healed fractures, it was proven that there is an equal distribution of another bone breakage.

1 comment:

  1. Greenstick Fractureare usually diagnosed using x-ray examination. The x-ray results will show the doctor the actual condition of the bones affected.

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