The bones are vital parts of the human body. Bones are delicate, and they are what make up our body’s structure. That’s why it’s important to take our vitamins and eat healthy, so that we can maintain healthy bone mass.
When we are young, sometimes falls may not hurt our bones as much unless the fall was on hard ground, or if we were to land wrong. But as our bodies age, our bones are not as strong anymore. Every fall can become crucial, and we must take better precautions so that falls won’t happen as often.
For a personal experience that happened recently, I decided to use this article to inform others of some medical terms for those who may be unfamiliar with them. As people know, a lot of accidents can happen right in our own personal homes. Some happen indoors, and some even happen when you are coming out your own front door. According to an article found at Health Politics, it is recorded that Americans suffer 50 million injuries each year. This can cost $117 billion in medical fees and also results in 150,000 deaths. Injuries are the leading cause of death for people under the age of 45.
Of course, my personal experience wasn’t anything that could result in death, but this is to inform the public that we must take better care of ourselves and our actions. I experienced a fall coming out of my own door in my home about a week ago, and one simple fall took my knee to a new level of excruciating pain. One missed step can lead to one simple strain and sprain.
After some x-rays at my local hospital, after no fractures had been discovered, there were two conditions of my knee that were discovered. Obviously, one was a knee sprain. A knee sprain means that you have injured ligaments around your knee joint. When you have a knee sprain, your knee can swell, buckle sideways, and also there is pain when you are standing or bearing weight on it. The best way to recover from a sprain is plenty of rest from your leg, taking ibuprofen, ice, and elevation. If it is necessary that you must do some walking, you can also purchase an ace bandage to wrap around the pained area to assist in your walking. These can be purchased at most of your local pharmacies. It can take about 2-4 weeks for a simple sprain to heal, and if is severely damaged, sometimes it takes surgery to repair the injury.
Another result which was found in my x-ray was a term called “loose body.”
Loose Body is a small piece of calcified cartilage that becomes caught in between the bones of the knee causing sudden, sharp pain and occasional giving away. Some ways to help prevent pain form loose body is taking OTC (over-the-counter) drugs such as MotrinTM (ibuprofen) and AleveTM (naproxen), and pain medications, such as TylenolTM (acetaminophen). Sometimes if you have sharp pain or troubles with your knee “giving away,” you might try a brace on your leg as well. Loose body could possibly cause some damage and unnecessary pain in the knee. If it is causing problems, then surgery could be required to remove the piece of cartilage or repair the knee cap.
While neither of these conditions are fatal, they can cause unnecessary pain. When the results of my x-ray were explained to me, the term “loose body,” was somewhat scary because I had never been informed of this medical term. It is important that we as the public keep ourselves informed of medical conditions, and do the best to keep our bodies in good health with vitamins, nutrients, and healthy diet essentials, so that we can lead better healthy lives.
