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You Don’t Have to Suffer With Heel Pain

You Don’t Have to Suffer With Heel Pain

One of the biggest complaints people have about their feet is heel pain. Your heels and arches support your body. When they hurt, you could suffer every time you walk, run, or perform any kind of high-impact activity. It’s not a way to live. With care from the heel pain doctors at Shenandoah Podiatry, you don’t have to keep living in misery.

What’s Causing You So Much Heel or Arch Pain?

The first step to treating your foot pain is to determine what’s causing you to hurt. There are many reasons that heel pain occurs. If you try to self-diagnose the cause of your heel pain, you could do yourself more harm than good. You might be treating the wrong cause, or you might not be giving yourself the level of care you need to feel better.

Here are the most common causes of heel pain treated in our Roanoke podiatry office:

Plantar Fasciitis

Your plantar fascia is a band of tissue that extends from your heel to the ball of your foot. When this becomes inflamed, it can be extremely painful. This is especially true when you get up in the morning or after sitting for long periods of time.

This is a common type of heel pain. For easy, at-home care you can try the following:

  • Stretching your calf muscles and the balls of your feet.
  • Wearing supportive shoes around the house.
  • Putting an ice pack on the bottom of your feet.
  • Rest your feet from high impact activities.
  • Take anti-inflammatory medications.

If those home remedies do not work, you might need more advanced treatment from a podiatrist, or there may be something else contributing to your heel pain.

Heel Spurs

If your heel bone develops enough calcium over time, it can create a small yet painful spur on the bottom of your foot. As you run or jump, this spur will dig into the ligaments, nerves, and tendons, causing you significant pain.

Treating heel spurs can be as simple as performing a few stretches and changing your shoes. If the spur is more developed, you might need injections or special orthotics to reduce the inflammation around the spur.

In very rare cases, you might need surgery. This does not happen often. If your heel spur is serious enough to require surgery, it is vital that you see a doctor.

Gout and Arthritis

Gout is a form of arthritis that occurs when uric acid builds up in your joints, causing them to become inflamed. Although your heel is not a joint, it is sensitive to any inflammation. If your ankle becomes inflamed, it might lead to heel and arch pain.

Sports Injuries

Sometimes, you might not know that you have an injury. This is common with stress fractures in odd areas, such as your foot or heel bone.

Other times, you might have an injury in another part of your body, such as in your lower back, which could cause you pain in your heels. When that happens, you might not realize that the two are connected.

Here are a few common sports injuries that lead to heel pain:

Don’t keep trying to manage your heel pain by treating the wrong cause. Schedule your examination with one of our Roanoke podiatrists and find out the specific cause of your heel pain.

Call our Roanoke office at 855-997-2367 to schedule an appointment. As always, we’ll have you in and out as fast as possible so you can get the care you need without spending your entire day at the doctor’s office.

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