Best shoes for Heel Pain Dr Brenden shows you what to look for!

When I'm looking for a shoe for heel pain and recommending it to my patients, I'm looking for a more structured shoe.

What does that mean? In the back of the heel, this area is called a heel counter. It should never press in. It needs to be firm to hold your heel. I believe that the middle of the shoe should never bend.

Your foot doesn't bend in the middle and nor should your shoe. Really firm. However, the shoe should always bend at the Toe. Grab it at either end. It's great. It's bending there really easily. You should never wring or twist out.

See how it just can't do that? And finally, make sure that you're doing the laces up Firmly. Make that shoe feels like a glove. These are my tips for shoes when you've got problematic heel pain. It's my one tip that helps most people get out of pain reasonably quickly.

Ready for Summer – How to choose awesome shoes for your fitness kick!

Blog, Sports Care

It’s that time of year where we look to putting away the winter Woolies and start pulling out the T-shirt’s and shorts. For many of us summer means trips to the beach a pool or somewhere else that requires us to bare more than we normally would hide away in winter.

This often means we also start getting back to fitness. Diving into exercise sometimes we are less prepared than we should be and we end up with foot or leg pain. Ouchie Mumma!

At a step ahead foot & ankle care If you were to ask our team of Professional foot doctors all qualified Podiatrists where people go wrong they will tell you it’s two primary areas.

Wrong shoes for the job

That’s right you decide that your jumping into activity so you rush down to buy new kicks based on ..... umm lots of you get things really wrong from here. You choose your new shoes for training based on;

Colour - really because you like blue?
Based on a brand you saw your favourite marque football or tennis star wears. - They are Professional mostly because they don’t get injured much and have awesome mechanics. Both of which you may lack!
You choose them because a fancy advertisement told you they were awesome. Ask yourself have you ever witnessed an advert that say “buy this, they are sort of ok”.
You choose them because your friend has some and they say they are awesome! Great idea if it’s a burger joint not so great when it comes to health advice.

How you should really choose a shoe

Generally your shoe should not only fit your foot but also your activity. Feet like both shoes and activity are all different! This means you should base your decision on more than the above. Particularly colour please not colour!

Here are tips that will help:

Flat feet generally go better with firm supportive runners. So if they say “super soft” and have nasty big air bags hanging off the sole these probably aren’t for you!
High arched feet like cushioning but not too much. Think moderation, look for shoes described as for under pronators or high arches.
Buy running shoes for running activities. Sounds simple but there are a lot of fashion shoes that are “runner” inspired. ASICS for example have separate fashion style shoes. Of you’ve decided to take up tennis with friends head out and get great TENNIS shoes!
Ensure they fit! There should be a fingers width between the end of your longest toe and the end of the shoe, when standing up. Your toes should NEVER touch the end of the shoe.

So that’s the first things as Podiatrist our team are going to tell you! As you read above this is two areas that people get a tad wrong. The other is getting into activity to fast and getting injuries that stop their activity. We will chat about that next week. So see you then.

Oh if you need help with your feet ankle or leg pain or problems the team at A step ahead foot & Ankle care would be more than happy to help you.

Our team is lead by Dr Brenden Brown who is a Podiatrist with over 20 years experience in that time serving as President of the Australian Podiatry Association. You may know Dr Brenden from his regular appearances as a medical expert on foot and lower limb problems in Magazines, television shows such as The Today Show, A Current affair or The project. He’s also been a regular on radio including ABC Sydney where he is well known as Dr Foot!

Not ALL heel pain is plantar fasciitis

Blog, Heel Pain

With 24 years clinical experience, Dr Foot knows a thing or two when it comes to heel pain—the causes and the common misdiagnoses.

He says, “The foot is a really complicated area of the body. There’s a lot more to the foot than just the fascia. So it stands to reason that not all heel pain can be attributed to the one condition—plantar fasciitis.

The plantar fascia ligament runs along the bottom of the foot. “Fasciitis” is Latin for ‘inflammation of the fascia’. Yet it’s NOT ALWAYS inflammation that’s the cause of heel pain.

Without the right diagnosis, how can we expect our heel pain to get better?

When making a diagnosis, clinicians need to consider ALL the possible causes of heel pain and not assume that every case of heel pain is plantar fasciitis.

Transcript

Not all heel pain is plantar fasciitis

Not all heel pain is plantar fasciitis. It can't be. Have a look at this foot. The foot and the leg is really complicated. Look at all these tendons, these bones, ligaments in this region. Look at the heel.

This is a really complicated area. It's one of the things that when I'm lecturing to other doctors, I'm talking to them about how very complex this region is. There's more that a fascia, so it stands to reason that it can't all be the one condition.

What we need to do is make sure that we diagnose the right condition. Now, fasciitis means an inflammation; it isn't always inflamed that's causing the pain. We need to make sure that we get the diagnosis right, so that we can head you in the right direction for treatment.

Is All Heel Pain Plantar Fasciitis?

Blog, Heel Pain

Watch our video to find out what other foot-related conditions could be causing your #heel pain and what do to if, despite seeing a clinician, your heel pain still exists.

There are numerous cases of misunderstood, or misdiagnosed, heel pain. Problem is, not all heel pain is the same AND there could be many underlying causes. Plantar fasciitis is just one of them!

Plantar fasciitis refers to the ‘plantar fascia’—that’s the fibrous ligament that runs along the bottom of the foot, from the heel bone to the toes.

It acts as our in-built shock absorber, but sadly it doesn’t easily stretch, which can cause problems.

Plantar fasciitis is Latin for ‘inflammation of the plantar fascia’. This pain and inflammation is a result of pressure on the foot and micro tearing of the plantar fascia.

Transcript
Is all heel pain plantar fasciitis?

Hmm, you know I think it's important to let people know that not all heel pain is a heel spur or plantar fasciitis. When I lecture or teach other doctors about foot and heel pain, I remind them how really complicated feet are. With dozens of ligaments and tendons and bones, how can it be that all pain is from only one Condition? And the thing is, it's not.

Apart from fasciitis, it could be abductor hallucis, nerve entrapment, tibialis posterior, flexor hallucis pain; there's literally half a dozen other conditions heel pain can be. If you're not getting better, it may be because you've misdiagnosed, and that's a sign that maybe you need another opinion.

Think you have a heel spur? Think again

Blog, Heel Pain

Think you have a heel spur? Think again

There’s a myriad mystery and misinformation about heel spurs. Just the thought alone of having a hard protruding growth on the bottom of the heel is more than a little alarming — but really, it needn’t be.

What is a heel spur?

“A heel spur is a small bony growth at the underside of the heel bone. People call it a spur or a calcification. We might also call it an exostosis (a benign outgrowth of cartilaginous tissue),” explains sports podiatrist and founder of A Step Ahead Foot + Ankle Care Dr Brenden Brown.

“Heel spurs are incredibly common. I see it in about 40-50% of the x-rays I perform. “However, the vast majority of people with heel spurs experience NO PAIN whatsoever.

“In all of the time I have been a podiatrist (which is 20 plus years) I have seen two symptomatic heel spurs. I’ve seen lots of heel spurs but only two that have ever presented with associated pain.

“So if we talk about the signs of symptoms of heel spurs there aren’t really any apart from having a large bony or hard nodule on the underside of the heel pad that doesn’t feel the same as the other foot and cannot be depressed (pushed or squashed).

“99% of people who come to me saying they have pain from a heel spur do not have pain as a result of a spur.

“A heel spur won’t bother you unless it’s prominent beneath your foot and the orientation of the spur is angled more towards the ground; this could cause some pain and discomfort. However, I’ve read about these types of spurs but I’ve never even seen one. Not in 20 years of practicing.”

5 heel spur facts

Your pain is most likely not caused by a heel spur

The vast array of people with heel spurs have NEVER HAD A DAY OF PAIN in their life

Heel spur pain doesn’t come and go like a yo-yo

In those very rare cases where people do have a heel spur that’s causing them pain—the pain doesn’t come and go.

“If you have a friend who tells you they had a heel spur and the pain went away you have to ask yourself ‘where did that pain go?’ The pain of a heel spur isn’t like the cast of Neighbours – it doesn’t travel from Melbourne to Queensland to get a job and never return!”

Silica won’t cure a heel spur

“People have told me they took silica and it miraculously dissolves their spur. I have to ask these patients ‘how on earth did the silica dissolve your bony spur but manage to leave the rest of the foot in tact. How did it not also dissolve the frontal lobe of your skull?”

No operation needed

Even if you do have a heel spur, which most of the time is an incidental finding on an x-ray, you don’t need an operation to remove it.

Cortisone won’t help your heel pain

For most people cortisone is useless in treating heel pain. In fact, studies have shown that after three months 56% of people who were having cortisone injections for their heel pain had zero reduction in pain.

If it’s not a heel spur — what is causing my pain?

Heel pain can be caused by a variety of other reasons including: plantar fasciitis, plantar fasciosis, abductor hallucis strain or tibialis posterior tendinosis.

If you are suffering from heel pain, be sure to visit your local podiatrist but don’t be fooled into automatically thinking that it’s a heel spur—it’s highly likely that it’s not!

Related articles:

10 things you should know about heel pain

A Step Ahead Foot + Ankle Care is one of Sydney’s leading foot and ankle clinics. Principal podiatrist and founder of A Step Ahead Dr Brenden Brown (AKA Dr Foot) has been taking care of people’s feet for more than 20 years.

With a background in sports medicine and having served as a former president of the Australasian Podiatry Council, Brenden is a wealth of information when it comes to foot and ankle care.

Got a question? Check out our Instagram profile #AskDrFoot

Or, tune into our Facebook page for regular live videos and updates on the latest foot and ankle advice from the experts.

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Heel Pain
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Cracked Heels
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