Have you ever wondered how broken bones heal? If you’re among the masses that don’t realize bone is a living tissue, just as alive as your muscles and skin, then the thought of bone healing must be quite perplexing. Well, in order to put to rest a common misconception, let’s ask the question “Is bone alive?” The answer is simple: absolutely. Now, older, more “experienced” bones can be dry, brittle, and in the process of dying, but in the bodies of most individuals, bones are very much alive. Bones have their own nerves and blood vessels, and they perform different tasks, like storing important minerals such as calcium, zinc and potassium. Your bones are made up of hard material to give them strength and billions of living cells which help give them the ability to grow and to heal when they get damaged.
When you break a bone, say, in your foot, it will require a number of things to heal properly. Immobilization and compression are two important factors to provide optimal healing. If the pieces of broken bone are greater than one centimeter apart, it often won’t heal correctly or in a very timely fashion. For this reason, we try to reduce the fracture site between the pieces of bone to less than this distance, in order to facilitate the desired healing. We can use plates, screws, pins and other materials to hold the broken pieces together, which can provide both immobilization and compression.
Because bone is strong and complicated, it takes a long time to heal. In some cases, the bone won’t heal completely for over a year! Thankfully it won’t be years until you’re back on your feet, but rather around 3-4 months after the initial injury, the bone has formed what is called a “hard callus” around the fracture site and at this point it may be strong enough to walk on.
Now, just because bone can heal doesn’t guarantee you’ll be back on the softball diamond or walking down the beach in 3-4 months. There are complications with healing, and it is imperative that you follow the doctor’s orders in order to avoid these complications. Problems with healing include “delayed union” in which the healing has not advanced at the proper rate, and “nonunion” in which every aspect of the healing process has stopped. A delayed union requires strict immobilization to fully heal, while a nonunion may require either a device called a “bone stimulator” to promote healing or in severe cases a bone graft can be used to heal the bone completely. Another barrier to proper bone healing can be yourself, if you don’t listen to your doctor’s orders. When patients walk on their “broken foot” too soon after surgery, they risk breaking the screws or pins placed in their bones which removes both factors (immobilization and compression), as well as potentially damaging and delaying the natural bone healing process. This is why casts and boots are implemented, as uncomfortable as they may be, because they help prevent you from placing too much weight onto the fractured bone should you need to walk on it.
Another thing to keep in mind is that if you have a surgery to correct a bunion or a hammertoe, for example, when your doctor cuts your bone, they have created a fracture, and the same healing principles apply. So, if you’ve been treated by a podiatrist for a broken bone in your foot or a corrective surgery such as a bunion repair, you should now know that your bones are alive and capable of healing themselves. You have a responsibility to yourself to keep off the affected foot, until you’ve been given clearance by your doctor, even if it doesn’t hurt anymore, because a lot goes into healing bone, and you must give it time to take place properly.
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