Pain anywhere in your body is never welcome, but when it strikes your foot, the impact can be serious. As you hobble around, wincing with each step, you quickly realize that you need answers sooner rather than later.
Well, we’ve got some preliminary answers for you here as sports medicine specialist Dr. Moisés Irizarry-Román and the team at No Mercy Sports Medicine take a look at potential causes of foot pain. As specialists in musculoskeletal injuries, we’ve seen our fair share of foot problems.
Here are some painful issues that show up more frequently than others.
Each of your feet contains 26 bones, and these bones can succumb to overuse injuries like stress fractures. In fact, stress fractures account for between 10% and 20% of sports injuries as athletes often overload the bones in their feet.
In your feet, stress fractures typically occur in the long metatarsal bones, but they can also develop in your heel. When it comes to symptoms, pain and tenderness in your feet top the list.
Another common driver of foot pain is plantar fasciitis, which affects about 10% of the general population and accounts for 10% of runner-related injuries.
Your plantar fascia is a tough band of connective tissue that runs along the soles of your feet from your heel to the base of your toes. This tissue provides support for your arches and acts as a shock absorber for your feet.
If you overstress your plantar fascia, tiny tears can develop and pain and inflammation quickly follow. This pain is most acute when you stand after a long period of inactivity, such as sleeping, and your plantar fascia tries to stretch out. After a few steps, the pain can decrease.
Throughout your body, you have tiny sacs called bursa sacs that prevent friction between tissues. In your feet, there are bursa sacs around the base of your toes, on the underside of your feet. If a bursa sac becomes inflamed, it can lead to a good deal of foot pain.
Your Achilles tendon, the largest tendon in your body, attaches your heel to your calf muscles. It’s also one of the most commonly injured. More specifically, Achilles tendonitis is common among athletes as they overstress this connective tissue, which leads to inflammation and pain.
One of the more painful foot issues is a heel bruise, which can develop in the fat pad that protects your heel or in the heel bone itself. Either way, walking on a heel bruise is most uncomfortable.
Each foot contains 33 joints, which means there’s ample opportunity for issues like osteoarthritis to set in as wear-and-tear in your feet accumulates.
This list of potential suspects for foot pain is far from complete, but it’s a good place to start as it highlights the more common culprits. To find out what’s behind your foot pain, we recommend that you see Dr. Irizarry-Román sooner rather than later for a comprehensive evaluation, which will likely include advanced imaging, such as musculoskeletal ultrasound.
To schedule your foot pain assessment, please contact No Mercy Sports Medicine in Miami, Florida. You can call 305-614-6757 or use our online form to request an appointment.
