There are two types of metatarsal fractures. Acute fractures are related to impact injuries that happen instantly, such as your wife treading on your foot with one of her high heels, having a bike or car run over your foot, or having a football boot embed one of the studs in your foot during a game. Each of those would constitute metatarsal acute fractures.
Metatarsal stress fractures are where you don’t have some nasty single event that causes the problem, but rather instead have a gradual deterioration that leads to one of your metatarsals (you have five) giving way.
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In many ways getting metatarsal stress fractures is a more worrying development then getting acute fractures of your metatarsal, because it indicates that there is an underlying problem with the way that you are treating your feet that is leading to the problems, and so you need to take a look at what could be potential causes of this if you want to make inroads into treating the problem.
Common causes of Metatarsal Stress Fractures
The causes of stress fractures in your metatarsal bones tends to be quite predictable, and you will see them repeated over and over again, because they are most commonly related to the style of the way people walk, overtraining and stressing the foot too much, and also are indelibily linked to certain professions where people inevitably put lots of stress on their feet due to the nature of their work.
So, the most likely causes for metatarsal stress fractures would be as follows:
– Overtraining – Particularly running which can put a lot of stress on your feet.
– Oversupination (this is where you tend to turn your foot inwards when you walk)
– Overpronation (this is where your tend to turn your foot outwards when you walk)
– Being in the army, a gymnast, runner, ballet dancer, gym instructor or people involved in manual work can all over time cause problems with the metatarsal bones.