I just had a discussion with a really interesting patient. He was a pro triathlete. He had some difficulty getting past a particular injury.
We were talking about all of the ways that you can encounter barriers to healing. And how you can start making progress in spite of them.
We were talking about two different things, logical and psychological barriers.
What’s the difference between logical versus psychological barriers to healing injuries in runners?
Well, that’s what we’re talking about today on the Doc On The Run Podcast.
View Details »Every runner with a stress fracture wants to know “when can I run?”
How soon you can start running after a foot fracture really depends on when you have enough strength in the bone so that the healing fracture will withstand the forces applied during running without breaking the bone again.
It all depends on what you do to speed up (or slow down) the bone healing process. The rate of fracture healing depends on your physiology, and it depends on stages of bone healing.
But it does NOT depend entirely on generic timelines.
How long is each stage of fracture healing when you have a broken bone?
Well, that’s what we’re talking about today on the Doc On The Run Podcast.
View Details »The first thing any runner should do when you roll your ankle is protect the ankle from further injury. In fact, the algorithm doctors use to treat ankle sprains is P. R. I. C. E.
P stands for Protection, meaning don’t roll it again. Don’t make it worse. Then, Rest it. Ice it. Use Compression to keep it from swelling. Elevate it to get the fluid out if it’s really swollen.
So, what happens is, you’re a runner, you’re out on a trail and you roll your ankle. What happens if you don’t follow the PRICE method?
It just might take a whole lot longer before it gets better.
What are the most common three ways I see runners lose all their fitness after they get an ankle sprain?
Well, that’s what we’re talking about today on the Doc On The Run Podcast.
View Details »Let’s say you’re out on a trail run, you roll your ankle and sprain it. So what do you do?
You limp home, you get back to the car, you ice it, you take some pressure off of it, you elevate it, you do all the right stuff. But, it’s really painful and swollen the next few days.
Then, maybe a day or two later, it’s black, it’s blue and swollen. But even worse, you look down and you’re kind of dismayed because your toes are swollen like sausages.
Believe it or not, I have had a number of patients who called me, not because they sprained their ankle, but because they were actually worried they may have broken toes as well.
Is it possible to break your toes at the same time you get an ankle sprain?
Well, that’s what we’re talking about today on the Doc On The Run Podcast.
View Details »Today’s episode comes from a discussion I just had yesterday with an athlete. He had a metatarsal fracture non-union.
A “fracture non-union” can develop when there is a crack in the bone that moving a little bit too much and doesn’t completely heal.
Non-unions can happen if you get a stress fracture, and you keep running on it and you’re tough and you’re strong and it doesn’t really hurt that bad.
If you keep running and repeatedly stress that crack, it can’t heal.
Should I get a CT scan or should I test walking to see if my fracture is healed?
Well, that’s what we’re talking about today on the Doc On The Run Podcast.
View Details »When you get an injury to a bone like a metatarsal stress fracture, you can develop a thing called a “bone callus.”
You might even see it as a lump visible on the x-ray in your doctors office.
Whether the lump is made up of hard bone, fibrocartilage or something in between, it may help you to understand the significance of that lump in your foot.
When the bone callous appears, and the size of the bone callous itself, can tell your whole lot about your progression of healing, and whether or not you might get other problems in the future.
What is a bone callus in a metatarsal stress fracture? Well, that’s what we’re talking about today on the Doc On the Run Podcast!
View Details »I was just giving 3 lectures on running injuries at a medical conference in Las Vegas.
As is often the case, after one of my lectures one of the physicians in the audience approached me in the hallway to ask a question.
What do you do with activity level when somebody has an old fracture where the bone was broken long ago?
The runner recently had a re-injury at that spot. It has been painful, it’s been swelling, and he’s trying to figure out what to do.
What’s a bone bruise at an old fracture site? Is it a big problem or a little problem?
Well, that’s what we’re talking about today on the Doc On The Run podcast.
View Details »I was just doing a call with a runner who started running before his fracture was healed on the x-ray.
In fact his regular doctor said he couldn’t run on it until the x-rays showed healing.
I let him start running on it, in a very structured way. Now he is back to full running.
If the bone is always getting stronger while it is healing, do you really need to wait until the x-ray finally proves it has fully healed?
Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast, we’re talking about whether or not you can run if you fracture is not yet healed on x-ray.
If you want to get back to running faster after a foot fracture (or any overtraining injury), the whole key is make sure that you are increasing your activity to get stronger, instead of just sitting around and waiting, while you get weaker.
But the only way you can do that is with constant readjustment based on how you feel and what happens in response to that activity during that recovery process.
This episode is about runner with a healing fracture who was told by a doctor, “don’t run.” Instead he was supposed to wait for another x-ray to prove it was healed.
And after I did a consultation call with him, I actually cleared him to start running now.
Today on the Doc on the Run Podcast, we’re talking about a recovering runner with a fracture who wants to ramp up his intensity today.
I just had a discussion with a runner during a telemedicine second opinion.
She rolled her ankle and went to the emergency room. They gave her a brace to stabilize the ankle and an ACE wrap to compress it.
She started some rehab exercises, and frankly she improved a lot.
But when she got back to running, she had intermittent pain in the back of her ankle.
This was not the same spot where she got the sprain.
She called because this pain has now been going on for a long time, and when she got an x-ray someone told her she might have a posterior process fracture of the talus.
She asked me, “What exactly is a posterior process fracture?”
Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast we’re talking about posterior process fractures of the talus.
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