Microtrauma is a general term given to small injuries to the body. The injuries mechanism may affect the management plans.
Is the mechanism of injuries in microtrauma similar to that of other traumas (i e macro or usual trauma)?
For skeletal muscle, there is considerable heterogeneity among injury types in their mechanisms of injury and their recovery therefrom. For example, skeletal muscle recovers quite well from most injury types unless the extracellular matrix is disrupted or lost. Thirty years ago, everybody thought all muscle injuries were the same. That is not the case now.
Definitions are sort of critical. If the issue is a traumatic injury (falling and breaking a leg) vs a non-traumatic injury (a so-called 'overuse' injury), then clearly mechanisms are different. Or are you referring to the size/scope/degree of the injury (sprain/strain vs rupture)? Tendons vs muscle vs bone?
Stress fractures seem to be a combination of exercise Hx, bone status, smoking Hx, exercise progression/volume/rest cycles, and nutrition. Kleges et al found BB players lost 1 gram of calcium/day in sweat while not consuming dairy, so their bone status was poor. The 2006 IOM report highlighted the RDA/DRI are not normed on athletes. Lappe et al gave Navy recruits extra calcium & D and reduced stress fractures by 20% (sadly they didn't dose to serum level). Lappe et al found 20% of women arriving in Army had osteopenia/osteoporosis. Rivero (Navy) found 60-80% of stress fracture cases had osteopenia/osteoporosis. Cropper et al found roughly 25% of women and 8.9% of men arrived at AF with iron anemia (treating it reduced injuries by 50%). Hewitt et al did brilliant work on muscle imbalances and ACL injury.
Realizing the general population has a 60% processed food diet while food nutrient content has significantly declined (USDA).
So, obviously data is very lumpy. It does highlight that a mechanistic model doesn't completely address all causes.... which might explain the very high re-injury rates. Many folks simply treat injuries mechanically.
But I'm not sure I'm answering your question. Cheers.
Although BMD is not fully predictive and pQCT (the best. Evans et al) is hard to find.... some DEXA machines can measure bone volume/size.
Bones are a protein-mineral-fat matrix that is constantly remodeling..... metaphorically like stiff muscles. Research can be mis-interpreted to suggest that a single variable fixes problems, but organic chemistry says multiple variables are interacting. So, extra protein can reverse osteoporosis (Heaney) and osteogenic exercise is critical (disuse atrophy).
BMD (2014 NHANES) is declining. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2731178?
Look at: https://www.betterbones.com/fractures-and-healing/make-your-first-fracture-your-last-fracture
And, NASA bone research is exc. Tightly controlled. No pizza delivery in space.
Therefore, prevention and treatment needs to be comprehensive.
Nice contributions from other responders. I learned.
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