HEEL PAIN - page 2
The following is page two of an article on the topic of Heel Pain. It is provided complements of by Eddie Davis, DPM, a podiatric physician with 23 years of experience. He is a graduate of the Temple University School of Podiatric Medicine, class of 1982 and performed his residency in Podiatric Surgery at the Veterans Administration Hospital of Washington, DC..
Each 25 second "set" can be repeated 5 times and you have invested about 2 minutes in giving yourself a lot of help.
Watch out for the shoes you wear. It is tempting to obtain shoes that are colorful and soft. Here is the proof that soft shoes are bad. Wrap a pillow around your foot with duct tape and walk for a block or two. You will come back with your foot hurting more because your foot sank down deeper into the soft surface, allowing the ligament to stretch more. The shoes should be stiff in the shank and flexible at the ball. Such shoes, to running buffs, are known as motion control shoes or stability shoes so going to one of the small specialty running shoes stores is a good place to start.
If you don't have a desk job, or have an industrial job see if light duty is available. A note from your doc may be all that is required in most cases and most doctors are happy to oblige.
Orthotics, by treating the cause of the problem, lead to the cure bette than 90% of the time. A small number of patients have waited so long that the plantar fascia has become thickened and filled with scar tissue and are not helped by "conventional" means. Those are the patients that have, traditionally, required surgical treatment in which theh plantar fascia is cut off the heel bone. Luckily, most surgery has been replaced by a relatively new mode of treatment, ESWT or Extracorporeal Shockwave Therapy. ESWT involves the application of multiple shockwaves to the diseased tendon or ligament and has an approximately 85 to 90% success rate. Keep in mind we are talking about this success rate in patients who are "tough cases," that is, already had the conventional treatment.
The ESWT machines look like miniature renal lithtripsors (kidney stone crushers). There are virtually no side effects to ESWT other than the price as only about 30% of insurance companies are paying for it. They realize that it is less costly and safer than surgery but also know that many more people who would avoud surgery would have no problem gettting ESWT so the voume of services would go up.
You don't have to live with painful heels.
Comment On This Article
This content is provided courtesy of http://www.heel-pain.org .
