Pain In Left foot on the heel...?!
Question:
Pain In Left foot on the heel...?
I have a pain in my left foot on the heel. It is terrible in the morning and as I stretch it and move around it diminishes a little. If i happen to step on something directly on my heel though it is a shooting pain into my heel / foot... could this be a bone spur?
Answers:
People like to think that its spurs but it usually isn't.
If there is a bone spur, 19 times out of 20 the bone spur is not causing the pain. Most of the time people who have heel pain that is worse when they first step on it and gets better if they walk around some have plantar fasciitis. The plantar fascia is a tough band of tissue that does not stretch well and runs from the bottom of your toe bones across the arch and inserts into the heel bone.
If there is inflammation in the area of the band, or you are walking funny, or most commonly if your arch is sagging recently, then suddenly that band is not long enough to go from the toe to the heel so it starts hurting at it's heel attachment. This pulling on the heel causes a reaction at the attachment where bone will form around the fascia.
In other words, usually the bone spur is a result of the problem, not the cause. Many people have bone spurs that do not bother them. People who have this sort of problem without having spurs on x-ray usually get spurs quickly if the problem goes on untreated.
You normally need to do a couple of the following things to get rid of this problem. Focusing on 1 usually doesn't work.
1) you need to get rid of the inflammation
2) you need stretches and exercises to loosen up that fascia
3) you need to correct the problem that caused it in the first place.
If you do all 3 of these things, then the pain will go away 95% of the time.