More vitamin D, faster stress fracture recovery

Definition: "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance "

18.10.2022

Athletes and soldiers often suffer from small cracks in bones due to overload. It can take several months to recover from such stress fractures. If the vitamin D level is relatively high (read: if the vitamin D level is as high as it should be), this recovery process is considerably faster.

$More vitamin D, faster stress fracture recovery$

Study

British doctor Thomas Richards, at St Mary's Hospital in London, followed 37 soldiers who had suffered a stress fracture. Often these fractures were the result of endurance training with boots on or field training.

Richards measured the soldiers' vitamin D levels and tracked how long it took for the fractures to heal.

Results
Soldiers with less than 25 nanomol/L of vitamin D in their blood recovered after 13 weeks. In the soldiers with an adequate vitamin D status, with a vitamin D level of more than 50 nmol/L, recovery took only 10 weeks.

$Athletes and soldiers often suffer from small cracks in bones due to overload. It can take several months to recover from such stress fractures. If the vitamin D level is relatively high (read: if the vitamin D level is as high as it should be), this recovery process is considerably faster.$

Conclusie

"With sufficient evidence that military training could multiply the baseline risk of stress fractures in recruits, ensuring that vitamin D insufficiency is minimised appears to be a logical ambition and one that could be achieved by imposing a minimum serum 25-OHD level threshold for entry to initial training", the researchers write.

"The study was limited by its small sample size and the fact that serum 25-OHD levels were not measured in recruits who did not develop stress fractures, removing the possibility of a control group. A larger study should next be conducted to determine whether routine screening is beneficial and cost effective before policy can be influenced."

Source:
BMJ Mil Health. 2020 Aug;166(4):240-2.

More:
Animal study: L-citrulline supplementation accelerates healing of broken bones 31.07.2020
Gelatine-based Fortibone makes bones stronger 12.05.2018
Gelatin makes intensive exercise even more effective against bone loss 18.12.2017

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