Should I just wait for weeks to let my fibular stress fracture heal? Well, that is a great question and that is what we’re talking about today on the Doc On The Run Podcast.
I got a question from a runner recently who has a fibular stress fracture. So, this is where there is a stress fracture in the fibula bone which is the one that goes from the side of your knee down to the outside of your ankle.
What she said was my primary care doctor got an x-ray, and she said that she cannot tell if this spot on my fibula, if it is an old stress fracture or a new stress fracture in the fibula bone. And so, the recommendation from the primary care physician was basically to just wait for four weeks, let it heal, let it calm down.
The runner wanted to know is this wrong? Is my primary care doctor’s advice wrong? Well first of all, no, actually the advice from the primary care doctor is not wrong. But I understand why it provokes anxiety in a runner to think about sitting around for four weeks that is a whole month of no running and just waiting for that four weeks to pass by. So, me personally the way that I do things well I would want to confirm that the diagnosis is either an old stress injury and now it’s something else or it’s that thing that looks weird on the x-ray is an aggravated inflamed heated up stress response or stress fracture.
I would want a real answer before telling you that you have to be imprisoned and kept off of running for four weeks and so I wouldn’t just wait and call that a treatment plan. I say that all the time, waiting is not a treatment plan. A treatment plan is a plan of action that you have to apply things to your situation so that the bone will heal as fast as possible, and you can return to running as fast as possible. That is a plan that requires action waiting is not action waiting is something else.
I would do something to significantly speed up the healing of time if we looked at it and that thing that was on the x-ray was confirmed as a new or recent fibular stress fracture. And if you’re confused about that you could actually have had a stress fracture before and it was healed but then you got in what we call an acute on chronic fibular stress fracture, where you now have in the same spot another stress fracture starting to happen, that could be.
But there is some way to verify that right? If we verified in fact that you do have an acute on chronic stress fracture number one I, would want to do something to speed up the healing as much as possible so it can heal as fast as possible. Just waiting will not do that just waiting will take time and it will take some time no matter what you do but you can always compress the time by doing more things to help the bone heal faster and more things to reduce the amount of stress and strain on the bone while that healing process is taking place.
I would never just use a fracture walking boot alone for a fibular stress fracture trying to get it to calm down and I certainly wouldn’t just wait for four whole weeks as the only action that is taking place. Again, don’t ever wait for four weeks. Don’t ever think that waiting is a plan. Waiting is something that you do while you’re trying to form a plan or just until you get old.
If you want to learn more about the strategies I teach to physicians at medical conferences the exact same strategies I use with runners who call me for a consultation or a webcam second opinion you can get those strategies for free in the stress fracture master class. Just go to www.docontherun.com/stressfracturemasterclass, you sign up there and I’ll see you in the training.
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