Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Causes
By Mayo Clinic staffStress fractures are caused by the repetitive application of a greater amount of force than the bones of your feet and lower legs normally bear. This force causes an imbalance between the resorption and growth of bone, both of which go on all the time. Repetitive force promotes the turnover of bone cells, but you add new bone cells when you're at rest.
If your bones are subjected to unaccustomed force without enough time for recovery, you'll resorb bone cells faster than you can replace them. As a result, you develop "bone fatigue." Continued, repetitive force causes tiny cracks in fatigued bones. These cracks progress to become stress fractures.
- Stress fractures of the foot and ankle. American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=A00379&return_link=0. Accessed Nov. 6, 2008.
- Killie H, et al. Overview of stress fractures. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Nov. 6, 2008.
- Zetaruk M, et al. Leg injuries. In: Frontera WR. Clinical Sports Medicine Management and Rehabilitation. Philadelphia, Pa.: Saunders Elsevier; 2007. http://www.mdconsult.com/das/book/body/110217197-3/0/1717/1.html?tocnode=55568581&fromURL=1.html. Accessed Nov. 13, 2008.
- Fields KB, et al. Stress fractures of the tibia and fibula. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Nov. 6, 2008.
- Clugston JR, et al. Stress fractures of the metatarsal shaft. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Nov. 6, 2008.
