One of the biggest myths in running is that injuries are inevitable. And one that we may have a great deal more control over than expected are stress fractures in running! Today we talk with Dr Nathan Carlson, an expert in this area who has worked with many runners on both prevention and recovery.
First up in our discussion is simply getting clear on what we’re talking about!
The term used by professionals is actually bone stress injuries.
Stress Fracture vs Stress Reaction
Starting at the top, you’ll see pretty quickly why Dr. Carlson points us to the term bone stress injury. He’s been working with runners in Kansas City for eight years and constantly studying information around this topic specifically.
There’s a paper that came out last year called Every Bone Stress Injury is Not a Stress Fracture. And it talks about the specifics of the injury.
If you think about the term bone stress injury, that’s really any kind of injury to one of your bones. That can range from a stress reaction, which is kind of the lowest severity to a stress fracture, where we have a fracture line that we can see on imaging, and then a full fracture, where there’s been a complete break through the bone.
For runners, that’s really important, because depending on the term that gets used…
