Foot Pain
Get Happy Feet Again
Do your feet hurt? Does it hurt to walk or stand? We understand foot pain can cause you to become sedentary and stop doing the things you love. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We believe one of the first steps in finding long-lasting foot pain relief is understanding your pain, how your feet work, and what’s causing the pain in the first place.
How Your Feet Work
Your feet are complicated structures consisting of bones, joints, muscles, and soft tissues, which all work together to allow you to stand, walk, run, and jump. Your feet consist of 3 sections: the forefoot, midfoot, and hindfoot.
Forefoot
The forefoot consists of your toes (phalanges) and longer bones called metatarsals. Your big toe is called the hallux.
Midfoot
Your midfoot consists of five bones that form your arches: 3 cuneiform bones, the navicular bone, and the cuboid bone.
Hindfoot
Lastly, the hindfoot consists of the largest bone in your foot, the calcaneus or heel bone, and the talus bone. The talus bone supports your leg bones to form your ankle. A problem with the talus bone can cause both foot and ankle pain.
Muscles, tendons, and ligaments run along your foot and control movement and balance. Foot pain happens when you have a disease, injury, or inflammation that upsets the delicate balance of all these moving parts.
Foot Pain Symptoms
Your foot pain symptoms will vary depending on what is causing the pain. Some common symptoms include:
- Heel pain
- Foot arch pain
- Top of foot pain
- Ball of foot pain
- Side of foot pain
- Toe pain
- Foot pain in the morning
- Swelling
- Numbness and tingling
- Difficulty walking
- Deformity of the toes
When you describe your pain to the doctor, be as detailed as possible as to the location, quality of the pain (sharp, stabbing, dull), when it started, and when you feel it.
Common Causes of Foot Pain
Your foot pain or your child’s foot pain can be caused by a wide variety of things. Some of the most common causes include:
- Arthritis
- Gout
- Diabetes
- Plantar fasciitis
- Freiberg’s disease
- Raynaud’s disease
- Achilles tendinitis
- Extensor tendinitis
- Stress fracture
- Sesamoiditis
- Torn ligament
- Morton’s neuroma
- Bunions
- Corns and callouses
- Flat feet
- High arches
- Bone spurs
- Ingrown toenails
- Chronic inflammation
- Obesity
- Bruised heel
- Overpronation
- Poorly fitting or supporting footwear
Foot Pain FAQs
Q: What causes foot pain without injury:
A: The majority of the causes above do not involve an injury. Injury is involved in the stress fracture, tendonitis, sesamoiditis, and ligament tear.
Q: How do I know if my foot pain is serious?
A: Your foot pain is serious if it persists more than 5 days with conservative at-home care, and is affecting your quality of life and ability to get around. You should see a doctor if your pain is persistent, the result of an injury where you can’t bear weight, or you have burning pain, numbness or tingling involving most of the bottom of your foot.
Q: What is plantar fasciitis?
A: Plantar fasciitis is a common cause of heel pain. It involves the plantar fascia, which is a thick band of tissue that connects your heel to bone to the bones of your toes. Plantar fasciitis most common symptom is stabbing pain in the heel when you take your first steps out of bed in the morning. It is most common in runners and overweight people. Early conservative treatment can make it go away.
Q: What are bone spurs?
A: Bone spurs are bony growths that poke out of the bones of your feet. They may be heel spurs, tarsal spurs, or toe spurs. They form because the body is reacting to an injury and forms new bone in the area.
Q: Can an ankle sprain cause foot pain?
A: Yes. The ankle and foot are connected by bones, muscles, ligaments, and nerves.
Q: Can foot pain be related to heart problems?
A: Yes. If you have pain in your feet and ankles because of swelling, that swelling may be related to a heart condition such as congestive heart failure.
Q: What can I do to get foot pain relief?
A: While you can try some conservative treatments at home, such as icing, changing to a more supportive shoe, etc., for acute foot pain or chronic pain that won’t go away, you need to see a doctor.
How Cima Health Can Help
Cima Health provides restorative, lifelong solutions that target the root cause of your or your child’s foot pain. Your care will start out with a comprehensive evaluation to assess the pain. We will also ask questions about your health history, home life, lifestyle, and habits before making recommendations for an integrative plan of care. Together, we come up with conservative and alternative treatments that can help you and your child live a healthy life.
Treating and preventing foot pain involves several treatment modalities, all of which you or your child can receive in one location. They include:
Chiropractic Care
After a thorough evaluation, our chiropractic care team may make precise adjustments of your feet and ankles (extremity manipulation) and adjust for spinal alignment as well. Which treatments you receive will depend on the cause of your foot pain. These adjustments are gentle, and will not cause you pain.
In addition to extremity manipulation and spinal manipulation, we may use other tools, including:
- Class IV laser
- Shockwave therapy for bone spurs
- FootMaxx orthotics
Our Palm Beach Gardens chiropractors who treat adults include:
Pediatric Care
Dr. Natalie is our doctor who specializes in pediatric care of infants and children, along with helping expectant moms and other adult patients. Chiropractic adjustments for children can help ward off foot pain with the use of gait training and monitoring your child’s progress. Dr. Natalie can also work with your older child in the areas of sports injury prevention and rehabilitation.
Medical Care
You may also receive medical care in the form of joint injections as appropriate. A steroid injection, or cortisone shot, can help reduce pain, swelling, and stiffness in your foot and ankle. You are limited in how many steroid shots you can receive in a year. We may also recommend a series of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections where we use your own plasma to help you heal.
Physical Therapy (PT)
Physical therapy (PT), can help you recover after an injury as well as help with arthritis and other causes of foot pain. Treatments may include:
- Manual therapy
- Shockwave therapy
- Class IV laser
- Dry needling
- Strengthening exercises
- Flexibility exercises
- Taping
- Orthotic management
- Balance training
- Gait training
Our physical therapy team will show you a range of therapeutic exercises and self-massage techniques you can do at home as well as with the therapist. You’ll gradually increase the number of repetitions until you regain pain-free mobility.
Lifestyle Changes
Depending on the cause of your foot pain or your child’s foot pain, the doctors at Cima Health may make some recommendations for lifestyle changes. These can include:
- Proper footwear
- Dietary changes
- Exercising more
Proper Footwear
Proper footwear can reduce foot pain as well. Look for shoes with good arch support and a wide toe box, for starters. You may also find that wearing padded socks – padding at the heel and ball of the foot – can help as well.
Dietary Changes
Making some dietary changes can reduce chronic inflammation that can lead to or worsen arthritis, gout, and plantar fasciitis. Our functional medicine team can work with you to develop a nutrition plan that helps reduce inflammation but can also help you lose weight, if weight is a factor in your foot pain. Eating a healthy diet will help you feel better overall.Physical Fitness
Getting physically fit and strengthening your muscles can help prevent foot pain in the future. Our physical fitness team can also help you by developing an exercise program tailored to your capabilities and goals. Regular exercise can help with weight loss and improve circulation, targeting several causes of foot pain. Our team may make recommendations on how to avoid sports injuries as well.
By making some lifestyle changes and getting regular chiropractic adjustments, you can help reduce foot pain and prevent it from coming back. Team up with the providers at Cima Health to find restorative, lifelong solutions.
Read What Our Patients Have to Say
Book an Appointment
Foot pain can make it hard to do simple things like walk on the beach, let alone go for a run. If you’re looking for a conservative treatment for foot pain, book an appointment today. One of our chiropractors will do a comprehensive examination to get to the root cause of your pain and develop an integrative plan of care to relieve your pain and inspire you to achieve whole-body wellness.
