Heel Pain
Your feet are under a lot of pressure most days of your life; they support you throughout the day and carry you to where you need to be. If you are experiencing pain in your heel, it could be for a variety of reasons. The human foot consists of 26 bones, 33 joints and more than 100 tendons, and the heel is the most prominent bone in your foot. This means that there is a lot that could go wrong. If you're are experiencing heel pain, it could just be that you have strained yourself and overused your heel, or it could be something more serious, and it's possible that you will need to see a podiatrist to diagnose the problem and help to get you back in tip-top shape.
The most common types of heel pain.
– Bursitis often results from standing for long periods and can be helped with simple cushioning or gel heel cups etc.
– Plantar Fasciitis
This is pain in the base of the heel which typically, is worse after rest and first thing in the morning, but can be worse the more time you spend on your feet. Typically it is one foot but can be in both.
It is the plantar fascia (soft tissue under the foot), which is pulling too hard on the heel bone and causing inflammation. The foot not functioning correctly often causes this.
At Walsh Chiropody we take a 5 steps treatment program. Simply by starting at the 1st stage and progressing on if the condition doesn’t resolve. However, in my experience most people don’t get past the 2nd stage as it nearly always clears up when we examine the way the foot functions with a gait analysis assessment and treat this.
The treatment for this condition is;
Simple exercises and footwear changes. Calf stretching is good for this as often it is associated with a tight calf muscle. Good supportive footwear is essential, not too rigid a heel but the main thing is supportive, i.e lace up shoes / boots. Sandals do not particularly provide good foot support.
Biomechanical assessment and prescription of insoles to improve the foot function(This is to see how your feet function when you walk. We use video gait analysis to slow the step down and see in details how your foot is functioning. Then from this we make insoles or orthotics to improve the foot function)
Ultrasound Treatment (This bombards the internal area in the heel with high frequency sound waves which encourage the dispersion of the inflammation and the heeling of the tissues, a short course of six treatments once or twice weekly is normally recommended)
Cortisone Injection (with the GP), This is normally a last resort as can be painful and not always successful.
Surgery. (This may be offered to some people, in my opinion it is not wise to have it unless very exceptional circumstances)
Because we are all different in terms of how we walk one solution doesn’t always work for everyone. There are many products out there, which provide general support to our feet. These will claim to cure heel pain and correct your gait and in some people the pain may resolve. However more often than not I find a more specific approach is better. Doing the biomechanical assessment allows me to determine your specific issues causing the problem and I can then treat you specifically with insoles / orthotics to not only cure the condition more effectively but to prevent its re-occurrence.
There are however some good products if you want to try some off the shelf ones from a Podiatrist. However, if these do not help you would strongly be recommended to come in for a biomechanical assessment.