Did you know that babies have more bones than adults? When you are a newborn baby you have about 300 bones and by the time you grow up, you have only 206. Now, you might wonder where do the other bones go? The answer to this is that as babies grow, some of their bones tend to fuse together. As a child, your bones are made of soft, flexible tissue called cartilage and as you grow older, over time the bones fuse and change to harder, firmer bones.
The bones usually stop growing by the time you are an adult that is, in your 20’s. The advantage of this fact is that a child’s bone is likely to remodel itself and if a child breaks his or her bone and it is crooked, it can straighten itself over time. On the other hand, if an injury happens at the end of a bone, the growth region, that might affect the normal growth of the bone. It may also cause deformity in the limb. Also, a child’s bone is more likely to bend instead of breaking because of its flexibility. Such injury is harder to treat than a broken bone. To recognize and take care of such kinds of situations, there are trained pediatric orthopedic specialists.
As one grows older, bones lose density and are easier to break. To can keep them healthy, one needs to get a good amount of calcium, vitamin D, and exercise.
-Vaishnavi Preethi