Zoom! Crash! Bang! Aaaah!

These are the sounds that you generally get to hear when someone is playing or running, and they fall.

Oops! If that happens to you, you go to the doctor.  He takes a picture of your bone (X ray) and informs  you that a bone is broken. Breaking a bone means that you have a fracture.  What next? He needs to put a cast on you.

But how does a cast help your bone? How does the bone get better? Doesn’t someone need to fix it?

Trust me the bones know how to repair themselves. The bones might seem lifeless but they have red bone-marrow within them, which is a factory for making millions of red blood cells, all the time. As soon as a fracture occurs, the bone-marrow starts producing a lot of tiny blood cells. These  little blood cells get to work and start the healing process. New cells surround the broken area and within weeks it gets to be as good as new. :)

Hmm. You must now be thinking that if bones fix themselves then why do we need a cast? Well, the bones are able to fix themselves but only if the broken bone does not move and is resting. A cast holds the broken bone in place while it heals.

A bone doctor more commonly called an orthopedician, knows how long you need a cast depending on the position and the seriousness of the injury. The cast has two parts – the outside hard part and the inside lining. The inner lining is made up of cotton and other synthetic material to make it soft. The outside part of the cast is made up of a white plaster or a fiberglass cast. You know the best thing about fiberglass cast? They can be made waterproof! It is okay if they get wet. Plus you can also scribble and draw graffiti on them. Yay!

One thing that you have to remember is that the skin inside the cast starts itching, but you have to be careful and not try to scratch it by inserting objects inside your cast. If you do so you might hurt yourself. So be patient ;)

Finally, when the cast comes off you might feel weird for a few days. Pretty soon you will be running around!

While it can happen to anyone, there are a few ways in which you can keep your bones healthy.

• No running or jumping ;) Nah just kidding!! Be active as exercise will make your bones stronger not weaker.
• You have to take in a lot of calcium in the form of milk, yogurt or fortified orange juice. Why? Duh! Your bone is made up of calcium!
• Vitamin D – very important for the absorption of calcium. You can find Vitamin D in the Sunlight, egg yolks and fish oil.

So if Humpty Dumpty were not an egg, he would have just needed a nice orthopedic doctor! Ha!