So, why should you choose A Step Ahead Foot and Ankle Care to look after your heel pain? You know what, not all podiatrists are exactly the same. We don’t all have the same level of experience. We don’t all have the same interests, and that means that different podiatrists will have particular areas of expertise or interests that they’re better at, and one of ours is heel pain.

Our clinics and practitioners tend to look after the tricky bits that other people don’t treat so much. Our clinic looks after anywhere between eight to 15 heel pain patients, just like you, every single day.

That’s right, rather than looking after your nan’s toenails, calluses, or corns, we’re actually spending each and every day looking after patients, just like you, who have problematic heel pain.

We’re often the second, third, or even fourth opinion for people that have had heel pain for many, many, many years. And luckily, we’ve worked really hard at making sure we get great results for people like you. So I hope that helps you understand a little bit more about us and why A Step Ahead is your choice for looking after painful heels.

ABOUT DR BRENDEN BROWN

Dr Brenden Brown, Podiatrist & Shendi Brown

Founder of A Step Ahead Foot + Ankle Care in Sydney, and former president of the Australasian Podiatry Council, Dr Brenden Brown (A.K.A Dr Foot) is a wealth of knowledge on how to take care of your feet, including how to find the best shoes.

Follow him on social media:
 instagram.com/askdrfoot
 facebook.com/podiatristsydney
 twitter.com/AStepAheadFAC

Shameless Plug or where to get real help!

Need help? Need another opinion? Just want to get this sorted? Great, we’d love to help you ? You can start by calling our wonderfully helpful team on 9673 2987. They are all parents and will be able to help answer questions and guide you in the right direction.

Another option is to use our call back service, pop your details in the very short form and we will call YOU back on a number and times that suits YOU best. ?

Hyperlinks:

  astepahead.com.au
  instagram.com/askdrfoot
  youtube.com/user/astepaheadpodiatry/videos
   facebook.com/podiatristsydney
  twitter.com/AStepAheadFAC

How to Choose An Awesome Shoe for Heel Pain.  When I’m choosing a shoe or recommending a shoe for heel pain, the things that I look for are real structure in a shoe.

What I’m looking for are features like, in the heel, I want what’s called a firm heel counter. That’s this area that surrounds the back of the heel. It shouldn’t be able to press in.

The other thing is I believe that when you have heel pain, a shoe should near that bend in the middle. It just doesn’t bend, but you’ll see again that the shoe straightaway bends at the toe when I grab it at either end.

That’s where your foot bends. It only bends at the toe and so should your shoes.

Finally, it doesn’t wring or twist out. That’s a really important feature, and the other thing is that it has some form of fastening, and laces are by far the best.

Choosing a great shoe when you have heel pain and wearing it all the time is one of my best and most favourite tips, and as far as I’m concerned, a key to beating problematic heel pain.

ABOUT DR BRENDEN BROWN

Dr Brenden Brown, Podiatrist & Shendi Brown

Founder of A Step Ahead Foot + Ankle Care in Sydney, and former president of the Australasian Podiatry Council, Dr Brenden Brown (A.K.A Dr Foot) is a wealth of knowledge on how to take care of your feet, including how to find the best shoes.

Follow him on social media:
 instagram.com/askdrfoot
 facebook.com/podiatristsydney
 twitter.com/AStepAheadFAC

Shameless Plug or where to get real help!

Need help? Need another opinion? Just want to get this sorted? Great, we’d love to help you ? You can start by calling our wonderfully helpful team on 9673 2987. They are all parents and will be able to help answer questions and guide you in the right direction.

Another option is to use our call back service, pop your details in the very short form and we will call YOU back on a number and times that suits YOU best. ?

Hyperlinks:

  astepahead.com.au
  instagram.com/askdrfoot
  youtube.com/user/astepaheadpodiatry/videos
   facebook.com/podiatristsydney
  twitter.com/AStepAheadFAC

Do I Need To See A Doctor?  Hmm, so, you’ve got heel pain, but it’s only been a few weeks and you’re wondering whether or not you actually need to come and see someone like me, right?

Okay, that’s a really reasonable question, but let’s start by assuming that it’s only been a few weeks and give you some simple stuff you can do at home to try and make sure it doesn’t become worse and we’ll talk about that in a second.

The first thing you need to think about and make sure you do is get some really good quality shoes. Now, good quality shoes are not super soft cushion shoes. They’re cushion shoes, but with a firm cushioning.

Now, the other things you need to look for when you’re looking for a good shoe is that they don’t bend in the middle, that they do bend at the toes, and they’ve got a firm heel counter. Now, we’ve got a whole video on what to look for when you’ve got heel pain in a shoe, so head there.

The next thing you can do is grab some anti-inflammatories. By all means, go and get some advice, so see your podiatrist or see your general practitioner, but some mild anti-inflammatory medication, like creams and also tablets is probably something you wanna try in the first few weeks.

The next thing you can do is that if this is a true inflammation of the heel, you need to try and get some ice on it. Try and bring the inflammation down. In the first few weeks, if you try these things, you might find that your heel pain goes away.

Now, if you’ve tried these things and guess what, it’s still there if you’ve had your pain for four weeks or more, from here, everything says to us that guess what? It’s gone from being an acute problem to being a chronic problem, and for most people, unfortunately, it means that the problem actually often gets worse.

You see, the problems move from being acute to chronic and chronic often means degenerative, and what’s happening is the tendon in your heel is actually starting to break down a little bit. Now, that’s a big problem if we don’t get on top of fixing it and as soon as we possibly can, so what you need to do is anything over four weeks, make sure you see a podiatrist and make sure you see a podiatrist that’s really experienced in seeing heel pain.

For example, the practitioners that work with me see anything between eight to 15 heel pain patients every single day, so that means they’ve got stacks of experience looking after people, yeah, just like you.

Finally, I wanna say one thing. We won’t harp on it, but guess what? If you’re stretching and you’ve had heel pain for more than four weeks, please stop. Everything that we find at the moment says that stretching with chronic heel pain actually makes things worse.

Need more information? Great, look in below and you’ll find that there are stacks of links to actually great information about heel pain and other conditions that we talk about in aid to getting you back to happy, healthy, and active, so I’ll catch you then at those videos next.

ABOUT DR BRENDEN BROWN

Dr Brenden Brown, Podiatrist & Shendi Brown

Founder of A Step Ahead Foot + Ankle Care in Sydney, and former president of the Australasian Podiatry Council, Dr Brenden Brown (A.K.A Dr Foot) is a wealth of knowledge on how to take care of your feet, including how to find the best shoes.

Follow him on social media:
 instagram.com/askdrfoot
 facebook.com/podiatristsydney
 twitter.com/AStepAheadFAC

Shameless Plug or where to get real help!

Need help? Need another opinion? Just want to get this sorted? Great, we’d love to help you ? You can start by calling our wonderfully helpful team on 9673 2987. They are all parents and will be able to help answer questions and guide you in the right direction.

Another option is to use our call back service, pop your details in the very short form and we will call YOU back on a number and times that suits YOU best. ?

Hyperlinks:

  astepahead.com.au
  instagram.com/askdrfoot
  youtube.com/user/astepaheadpodiatry/videos
   facebook.com/podiatristsydney
  twitter.com/AStepAheadFAC

Do Orthotics Fix Heel Pain? No, I don’t actually think orthotics fix heel pain, but orthotics do fix poor foot posture. And most times heel pain is exacerbated or made worse from poor foot posture.

There are a couple of different types of heel pain that are actually from muscles that overwork as a result of your foot overworking, which can be a result of either doing too much work or too much work because your foot posture isn’t working.

And so, therefore, the muscles are overcompensating and making things worse.

It’s really frustrating as a practitioner when I see that patients are just given orthotics for heel pain.

There’s no way that just giving orthotics is going to fix you 90% of the time. You definitely need to look at addressing things like strength, exercises, your footwear choices for a limited period of time and rehabilitation of that tissue.

Orthotics just won’t do that by themselves.

ABOUT DR BRENDEN BROWN

Dr Brenden Brown, Podiatrist & Shendi Brown

Founder of A Step Ahead Foot + Ankle Care in Sydney, and former president of the Australasian Podiatry Council, Dr Brenden Brown (A.K.A Dr Foot) is a wealth of knowledge on how to take care of your feet, including how to find the best shoes.

Follow him on social media:
 instagram.com/askdrfoot
 facebook.com/podiatristsydney
 twitter.com/AStepAheadFAC

Shameless Plug or where to get real help!

Need help? Need another opinion? Just want to get this sorted? Great, we’d love to help you ? You can start by calling our wonderfully helpful team on 9673 2987. They are all parents and will be able to help answer questions and guide you in the right direction.

Another option is to use our call back service, pop your details in the very short form and we will call YOU back on a number and times that suits YOU best. ?

Hyperlinks:

  astepahead.com.au
  instagram.com/askdrfoot
  youtube.com/user/astepaheadpodiatry/videos
   facebook.com/podiatristsydney
  twitter.com/AStepAheadFAC

What are my 2 favourite treatments for Heel Pain?  I think I’ve got two favourite treatments for heel pain, two that stand out the most, and the two that I think are the best at work include shockwave or extracorporeal shockwave therapy and the other one that I think stands out is progressive muscle strengthening or progressive muscle rehab.

These two treatments have actually revolutionised almost the way that we treat heel pain.

We’ve seen patients’, period of time in suffering or experiencing this pain, significantly decreased by using these two therapies.

The important thing about them though is making sure you have someone that truly understands how to implement them.

So for example, with shockwave, you can’t just use shockwave and hope that it will work, and with progressive muscle rehab, it’s really important that your therapist works with you on slowly increasing from static exercises to physically moving exercises, to exercises that are actually functional and delivered exactly for the activity you want to do.

ABOUT DR BRENDEN BROWN

Dr Brenden Brown, Podiatrist & Shendi Brown

Founder of A Step Ahead Foot + Ankle Care in Sydney, and former president of the Australasian Podiatry Council, Dr Brenden Brown (A.K.A Dr Foot) is a wealth of knowledge on how to take care of your feet, including how to find the best shoes.

Follow him on social media:
 instagram.com/askdrfoot
 facebook.com/podiatristsydney
 twitter.com/AStepAheadFAC

Shameless Plug or where to get real help!

Need help? Need another opinion? Just want to get this sorted? Great, we’d love to help you ? You can start by calling our wonderfully helpful team on 9673 2987. They are all parents and will be able to help answer questions and guide you in the right direction.

Another option is to use our call back service, pop your details in the very short form and we will call YOU back on a number and times that suits YOU best. ?

Hyperlinks:

  astepahead.com.au
  instagram.com/askdrfoot
  youtube.com/user/astepaheadpodiatry/videos
   facebook.com/podiatristsydney
  twitter.com/AStepAheadFAC

Should I keep stretching with heel pain? I think the interesting thing about heel pain is you need to look at whether or not stretching is actually increasing irritation to the area.

Then, so many people actually don’t have tight muscles, but practitioners are used to treating it the same old, same old way, so they provide the same treatment.

If stretching irritates your heel and you find it increases your pain, then stretching isn’t for you.

Secondly, if that muscle isn’t actually tired, then stretching will only ever increase your pain and you’ll never get better and never reach any of your goals, so you’ll never get back to happy, healthy, and active.

ABOUT DR BRENDEN BROWN

Dr Brenden Brown, Podiatrist & Shendi Brown

Founder of A Step Ahead Foot + Ankle Care in Sydney, and former president of the Australasian Podiatry Council, Dr Brenden Brown (A.K.A Dr Foot) is a wealth of knowledge on how to take care of your feet, including how to find the best shoes.

Follow him on social media:
 instagram.com/askdrfoot
 facebook.com/podiatristsydney
 twitter.com/AStepAheadFAC

Shameless Plug or where to get real help!

Need help? Need another opinion? Just want to get this sorted? Great, we’d love to help you ? You can start by calling our wonderfully helpful team on 9673 2987. They are all parents and will be able to help answer questions and guide you in the right direction.

Another option is to use our call back service, pop your details in the very short form and we will call YOU back on a number and times that suits YOU best. ?

Hyperlinks:

  astepahead.com.au
  instagram.com/askdrfoot
  youtube.com/user/astepaheadpodiatry/videos
   facebook.com/podiatristsydney
  twitter.com/AStepAheadFAC