Stress Fracture

Hello again everyone today I'm going to talk about a stress fracture! Now just to elaborate, this is a type of fracture. A fracture is basically a medical term for a broken bone. So when its a Stress Fracture, just like mentioned in the name it's because of stress to the bone.

A stress fracture is a small crack in the bone and can be any size such as a hair line fracture to a huge crack. They are usually caused by overuse or high impact sports. That being said when your muscles become fatigue and can no longer absorb the shock it causes stress which leads to the horrible fracture.

I have a family member who had a stress fracture but they were not aware of it. They felt so much pain in their foot and it made it difficult to walk. Their main priority was sports, sports, sports, no time to rest any injuries no matter how much pain there was. They went days even years without getting the injury checked out. Discovering 2 years later they had suffered from a stress fracture and did not let it heal properly. Due to their decision, they now have problems causing pain quite often on that foot. Sadly, it could be something they will have to deal with for the rest of their lives or a good majority of it. So this is why I chose this injury and want to explain everything you need to know to be able to either prevent, treat or even identify a stress fracture.

Symptoms

• Pain in the injured area
• If the pain increases with time
• Sometimes their if redness or swelling

How to diagnose it? Just like most injuries you must get a X-ray. Although, sometimes the fracture may not appear in a X-ray which is why your doctor would schedule you a MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) which is a more sensitive photograph.

Prevent

1. To prevent this injury, a person must have proper dieting meaning making sure to get their vitamins such as calcium, vitamin D, etc.
2. Also, the most important would be to take caution of how much we exercise and listen to our bodies when there is too much stress and needs a break.
3. Lastly, make sure to wear the proper equipment and do every exercise properly.

Treatment

1. TAKE A BREAK!!
2. Take pain medication prescribe by a doctor if necessary
3. Make sure to ice the injured area

Here is quick video giving a summary of my blog and a in depth explanation of a stress fracture!

http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=a00112
http://kidshealth.org/teen/food_fitness/sports/stress_fractures.html#