Stress fractures are tiny breaks or cracks that gradually develop in our bones. The most commonly occur in the foot or lower leg because of high impact stress on the bones. Physical activities such as sports can cause this high impact stress and result in stress fractures.
For example, playing tennis or running causes the bones in your feet to take the brunt of the stress involved. This is simply because your legs and feet are absorbing the impact and pressure created by your entire body during the activity.
Tiny stress fractures form on the surface of the bones in your legs and feet if they absorb more pressure than they can handle.
Luckily, stress fractures are almost completely preventable through some healthy lifestyle choices.
Let’s discuss the main ones in some detail to help you prevent stress fractures from occurring in your bones.
Preventing Stress Fractures Through Healthy Lifestyle Choices
Here are some key healthy lifestyle choices that help prevent stress fractures.
Wear Appropriate Footwear
Your favourite pair of sneakers look great; however, they aren’t necessarily meant for running or a workout. Appropriate footwear supports your legs during physical activities like sports. Therefore, you need to wear appropriate footwear to reduce the stress on your leg and foot bones.
Different activities put different pressure on your feet, which is why it helps to remember that running shoes are for running and basketball shoes are for basketball. They are designed to support your legs and feet through these specific activities.
The best solutions are custom inserts or footwear designed specifically to support your unique feet and physical activity requirements. For example, flat feet require arch support and custom inserts and footwear can provide the arch support needed to help absorb impact and pressure in the right places, preventing stress fractures.
Eat a Balanced Nutrition
Nutrition plays an important role in preventing stress fractures and improving health and fitness. If you eat right, you can increase the strength of all your bones, not just the ones in your legs. Strong bones require a healthy intake of calcium and vitamin D-rich foods like eggs, yogurt, salmon, and leafy greens.
Often, natural foods are not enough to meet your body’s vitamin D and calcium requirements. This is where dietary supplements can help ensure you get the recommended daily nutrients you need for strong bones and a healthy body.
Lose Weight Responsibly
Since the bones in your legs and feet support your entire body’s weight and the pressure it exerts during physical activity, weight loss can be helpful. Losing weight helps reduce the pressure and impact of your extra weight on your feet and leg bones, preventing stress fractures.
Of course, weight loss should not come at the cost of health. Reduce your calorie intake, exercise regularly, and make healthy lifestyle choices to lose weight. However, you shouldn’t try to lose more than one to two kilos of weight loss per week.
This weight loss is healthy, and once you reach a healthy weight, you should stop weight loss and maintain your new weight.
Conclusion
These are just some of the key lifestyle choices you can make to prevent stress fractures, and there are many others like tobacco cessation, stretching before workouts, incremental workouts, and more. We can discuss those another time.
For now, follow the mentioned healthy lifestyle choices, and you should be able to prevent stress fractures easily.
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