Osteoblast/Clast Remodeling IV: Brickwork

Hoping to understand "how often" our race horses "must" engage in speed work to maintain race appropriate fracture resistance (FR), the blog theorized the various bone remodeling "processes" in the race horse. Thus far these include:

1. Bone glue changes.
2. Compactive changes in the mineral lattice.
3. Rearrangement of material.
4. Osteoblast/clast remodeling.

#4 above is the present subject--osteoblasts and clasts-- with the question: what do they bring to the table in terms of bone remodeling and FR?

Consider again that equine bone might strengthen in several ways:

Circumference and size, inward and outward
Density
Strength and volume of bonding materials
Rearrangement and changes in quality and % of materials

What part do osteoblasts play regards the above? My conclusion (last post on this) had been that osteoblasts affect "bone size" or circumference instead of any of the other factors! If we may compare this process to laying bricks, can we say that regardless of what's under construction, or the form, shape and size the building will take, a brick is still a brick.

That's the theory, anyway. But, this has some logical support. Can we believe the osteoblast/clast bone construction process evolved over the eons, that the process probably is the same or similar in the fish, the dinosaur, modern homo sapiens, and our racing TBs. And, taking this further, the presumption is that the mechanical-chemical signaling/delivery devices that constitute this process are the same for the human couch potato as Usain Bolt setting a 100 meter world record. In the equine, we will fail to affect the process just because we race the horse.

Now, you shrewdly ask, is it conceivable that the continuing stress of athletic training might cause denser new osteoblast bone. We might e.g. due to the stimulus of exercise have more osteoblasts acting in a given area then in the couch potato. This is a legit question but decline going there for the following reason: If you take the trouble to read the exact chemical/physical processes involved in stimulating the osteoblast to act, delivering materials, forming the chemical and atomic bonds--somewhere in combing through such minuta I believe you'll persuade yourself that the material will be constructed in a certain pre-ordained way. Again, in this regard, while we may have more of them, a brick is still a brick.

Thus, for my purposes I will conclude that the osteoblast process will give us new bone material having a certain sameness to it's quality. This has significant implications--next post.

Our training, below.