A 2003 update of bone physiology and Wolff's Law for clinicians.

By 1892, Julius Wolff and others realized that mechanical loads can affect bone architecture in living beings, but the mechanisms responsible for this effect were unknown, and it had no known clinical applications. In 2003 we know how this effect occurs and some of its applications. Our load-bearing bones (LBBs) include tibias, femurs, humeri, vertebrae, radii, mandibles, maxillae, wrists, hips, etc (so LBBs are not limited to weight-bearing ones). The strength of such bones and their trabeculae would represent their most important physiologic feature but in the special sense of relative to the size of the typical peak voluntary loads on them. The biologic "machinery" that determines whole-bone strength forms…