Although bone tissue is four times stronger than concrete, most people have the misfortune of breaking one or more bones at some point in their lives.
When a patient with a broken bone comes to the emergency room, they start by taking an X-ray so that the doctor can see exactly where the fracture is.
Next, you have to align the bone ends exactly right. In this way, the doctor ensures that the body needs to generate as little new tissue as possible and that the fracture heals properly.
The offenders were held to justice
The fractures must now be held in exactly the right position while the fracture is healing. This is usually done with a plaster cast and sometimes with a splint, which both provides support and reduces pain, as the bone ends can no longer move and thereby damage the surrounding tissue or nerves.
In complex cases, it is necessary to fix the bone ends, for example with metal threads, nails or screws, but this requires surgery.
The rule of thumb is that it takes twice as long for bones in the lower body to heal (16 weeks) than in the upper body (8 weeks). Children’s bones usually heal in half this time, but in older people, the bones need more time to heal together.
The cut is bleeding
If you break a bone, weeks or months in a cast usually follow. When the bone heals, however, the fracture site is often the strongest part of the bone. Below is an explanation of how the body rebuilds a broken bone.
Bones need stress
Bones break down and rebuild themselves when stressed. As early as the 19th century, the German anatomist Julius Wolff discovered that bones become stronger the greater the load on them.
On the other hand, the bones become more porous and weaker when they are not subjected to stress. This can be seen, for example, in spaceships that stay in weightlessness for a long time.
