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The Broken Bones Article
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Healing Broken Bones – It All Depends…
Healing broken bones need a lot of tender loving care. The speed at which bones heal depends on many factors.
These factors include the person's age, general health and type of break. Some broken bones will heal faster than others depending on where the break occurred and how serious the break is in terms of the extent of the break.
The younger a person is the faster bones will generally heal. Bone cells will regenerate faster in a young person. Bone is living tissue made up of cells that age just like the rest of the body.
Healing broken bones in a senior citizen may take months while the same bones may heal in a teenager in 1/3 the time.
There are two basic kinds of bones and they heal at different speeds for a very good reason. The main shaft of a bone, or cortical bone, is dense bone. It's more compact and thicker than the spongy trabecular bone at the end of the bone shafts.
The trabecular bone has a much better blood supply than cortical bone which is a factor in healing broken bones. The more blood flow there is to a bone, the faster a bone will heal.
After taking the type of bone as a healing factor into consideration, the next factor affecting healing rate is nutrition.
Vitamin D and calcium levels in the body have a direct impact on healing broken bones. In fact, proper nutrition on a regular basis has a direct impact on the likelihood you will break any of your bones. When bones don't get enough calcium, they begin to thin which makes bone breaks more common.
Healing broken bones need a nutritional boost. Though it's important to get adequate calcium, it's just as important to eat a balanced diet. Just like the skeleton is a system of bones, nutrition impacts the entire body system including healing broken bone rates.
When you are dealing with healing broken bones, it's very important to follow the doctor's advice. Children who break bones should not return to strenuous sports until given the "okay" by the doctor.
Adults told to keep weight off the broken bone should use crutches until the doctor says the bone is healed. After a certain amount of time passes after the break, you may believe the bone is fully knitted back together when it really is not fully healed.
If you use the bone before it's properly healed, you can re-break the bone or significantly delay the healing time.
When the right time comes the doctor will tell you whether healing broken bones are ready for exercise or therapy. Once you reach that point the exercise can speed up healing.
As you can tell, healing broken bones is a long process which requires a lot of patience. But if you follow the doctor's orders and eat properly, your bones will heal almost as good as new.