Physiotherapists in Bury treat many different conditions including the issues profiled below.

The Structure of Bone

Bone is one of the body.s connective tissue and its cells produce a firm and rigid framework to make the skeleton of the body. It has a good blood supply and is surrounded by nerve endings which are mostly in the soft tissues which enclose the bone. Two types of bone exist, cortical bone which exists in solid masses or sheets and trabecular bone which is a lattice like honeycomb of small bone struts. The mass of bone secreted is five to eight percent water and 60-70 percent Hydroxyapatite, which is composed mostly of calcium and phosphate. The rest of the bone is made up of collagen, a form of fibrous tissue.

The crystals of Hydroxyapatite mean that bone is hard and can withstand compressive stresses while the fibrous tissue reduced the brittleness and resists tension stresses. Bone is laid down in an arrangement of concentric cylinders with a central channel carrying the blood vessels and nerves. The osteocytes or bone maintaining cells lie between the layers of bone. The whole unit of the individual cylinder is known as a Haversian system or an osteon. The periosteum covers the outer surface of the bone, with a tougher outer layer and a cellular inner layer.

Bone Metabolism

Bone, like muscle, is an adaptive tissue and bony mass and its structure changes to resist the forces which are applied to it in activity. Changes in the bone require that a large number of cells which are quite far apart join in to perform a particular activity and they do this by chemical messengers but also by long outgrowths from their cells connecting with others. How fast bones can strengthen or become weaker is not clear, although experiments have shown that a bone can increase its mineral content by 40% in six weeks if it is frequently loaded. A loss of 10-15% of bone mass can be expected if a bone is kept unloaded for eight weeks.

Cortical bone may be 35% greater in mass in the playing arm of a professional male tennis player and bone can react even more strongly as its density is very high in expert weight lifters. Sclerosis, an increase in density of vertebrae adjacent to discs which are suffering degeneration, is less beneficial a process and may impede nutritional transport through the bone. Osteophytes, bony outgrowths, may be an attempt to stabilise a joint but can also get in the way and cause nerve impingement.