How to Speed up Bone Fracture Healing

The body’s self-restoration of bone fracture is instant and does not require direction from us. However, what we do during the healing process significantly affect the speed, comfort and completeness of the bone renewal process. Moreover, a healthy lifestyle with a nutritious diet can strengthen the entire skeleton and reduce the likelihood of future fractures.

What Happens When the Fracture is Healing?

Fracture healing is a complex process of cell and tissue production. This requires growth, inflammation, antioxidants, bone breakdown as well as bone-building cells, hormones, amino acids (protein), and numerous nutrients.

Fracture Healings Three Stages

• Inflammation Phase – Blood clot forms immediately after fracture, allowing the inflow of inflammatory cleanup cells. Thereafter comes the (Cytokine), which brings the repair cells into the fracture gap. These cells instantly differentiate into specialized cells that build bone tissue and new cartilage.
• Reparative Phase – This begins around two weeks after the fracture occurred. In this stage, proteins produced by the bone-building and cartilage-building cells starts to merge into soft new bone substance, which eventually hardens as bone weaves together over a 6- to 12-week time period.
• Remodeling – The bone substance begins to mature and remodel itself into stronger lamellar bone by the bone formation cells and the bone resorption cells

The Nutritional Demands of Healing

Every stage of the fracture healing process has increased nutritional needs. Importantly, the healing process requires a lot of energy, which is acquired though calories in food. Furthermore, the fracture healing needs a fusion of new protein these amino acids are also obtained through food. Good blood supply is another factor mandatory for fracture healing (anything reducing blood flow smoking, little physical activity etc. slows the healing process). Finally, the trauma of the fracture itself creates a biochemical eruption of free radicals (pro oxidants), resulting in oxidative stress that can drain the bodys antioxidant reserves.

Nutritional Intake to Speed Fracture Healing

Generally, people are not aware that they can actually make their bones heal faster. They are normally just told to limit use of the injured bone. However, there are many ways to reduce healing time of the bone fracture:

Provide the body with sufficient energy

The fracture healing requires a great deal of energy, so it is important to increase the calorie intake. An adult normally requires around 2,500 calories per day, but a person with severe bone fractures may need up to 6,000 calories in a day! If this need is not met, the healing process is compromised.

Increase protein intake

Bone is made of living protein upon which mineral crystals are implanted. By volume, about 50% of bone is protein. When a bone fracture takes place, the body starts collecting protein building blocks to create new bone. Increasing protein consumption promotes growth factors such as insulin like growth, which has a positive effect on skeletal integrity, muscle strength, immune response, and bone renewal. A number of studies have proven that even a modest 10 to 20 grams increase in protein intake notably accelerate bone fracture healing. Specific amino acids of particular importance are: lysine, arginine, proline, glycine, cystine, and glutamine. Lysine enhances the calcium absorption, which increase the amount of calcium absorbed into the bone matrix, aiding the regeneration of tissue.

Increase consumption of anti-inflammatory nutrients

Antioxidants repair the oxidative damage caused by free radicals that are produced by the injured tissues. These free radicals are resulting in inflammation, further breakdown of bone collagen and excessive bone turnover. Antioxidants including vitamins E and C, lycopene and ((alpha lipoic acid)) have been claimed to reduce the destructive effect of oxidant free radicals and therefore improving fracture healing.

Inflammation is vital for cleaning up and rebuilding the bone. Many standard anti-inflammatory drugs inhibit the inflammation enzymes. This relieves the pain, but also slows healing. On the contrary, nourishing the body to reduce inflammation naturally actually speeds the healing process. Vitamin C, bioflavonoids and flavonols (such as quercitin, proanthrocydins), omega 3 fatty acids and proteolytic enzymes (such as bromalain and trypsin) naturally calm the inflammation and speed healing. Also, anti-inflammatory nutrients help reduce pain.

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