Why do we experience heel pain?

One of the most common reasons for patients visiting a local podiatrist or primary care physician in Phoenix is for heel pain. My patients have done their fair share of research on “Dr. Google” to try and figure out why that nagging pain in their heel is keeping them from activities and enjoying a healthy, active lifestyle.

Not all heel pain is plantar fasciitis. I’ve seen plenty of patients come to me self diagnosing with plantar fasciitis and that is not always the case.

Could you have an entrapped nerve in the foot? Do you have a swollen muscle belly causing pain that is perceived as coming from the heel? Is it Achilles Tendonitis? Is it an inflamed bursa? Do you have a blocked sweat duct or callus formation underneath the feet that presents itself as heel pain? Do you have neuropathy or Diabetes leading to tingling, burning, and numbness in the feet but your first signs were heel pain? Could you have suffered from repeat trauma leading to stress fractures in your calcaneus heel bone?

The list goes on-and-on, but it takes a well trained and trusted Podiatrist to help you get to the bottom of your painful symptoms. Starting with in-house X-rays on your initial visit and assessing the soft tissue structures with our state of the art ultrasound machine are important steps to having deeper insight into your foot health. The shape of your bones in your feet and how you bear weight in order to biomechanically function with every step explains your current pain and is a tell-tale sign of how you will perform in the future. On ultrasound, we can pick-up ruptured ligaments, torn soft tissue, foreign bodies, or even anomalies in the foot that point to a certain pathology.

With 26 bones in each foot, give or take your genetic inheritance of additional accessory bones, 30 joints, and more than 100 muscles, tendons, and ligaments-it’s no wonder that foot pain is both fascinating and perplexing at the same time. Have you thought of the arteries that bring your oxygenated blood and nutrients to your feet as well as the veins and tiny lymphatic vessels that help drain swelling and inflammation away from the tip your toes to bring this fluid back to your heart? Not to mention- we have over 7,000 nerve endings in each foot. You are a canvas and beautiful tapestry of a culmination of various anatomical structures that we are coming to learn more and more about every day with advancing science and technology.

As we all learned in basic sciences and from the rule of nature- "form fits function." Does the structural integrity and “form” of your foot allow for optimal function? Are you running, hiking, biking, swimming, standing, and working at your jobs to the capacity that you would like?

Let me help you get to the bottom of your heel pain and explore together options that will lead you to healthier and stronger feet.

Sophia Stocks, DPM, AACFAS, DABPM