Pain in your feet, especially the heel, which bears the focal point of your weight when standing or walking, can radically disrupt your lifestyle no matter what your daily activities demand of you.
Finding relief from heel pain is a highly personal process, requiring accurate diagnosis of the problem and targeted rest, treatment, and healing so you not only stop feeling pain in the short term, but also experience lasting relief and preventing heel pain in the future.
Causes of heel pain
Many long-term, underlying conditions can affect your feet and heels, as well as stubborn simple injuries like bruising that continue causing pain long after other body parts would have healed, due to the constant use and pressure your heel is under when walking. A few lesser-known causes of heel pain besides injury or arthritis include:
- Bursitis
- Achilles tendinitis
- Heel spur
- Plantar fasciitis
- Stress fractures
Many causes of heel pain are repetitive use injuries, including stress fractures, inflammation, and tendon damage. Other times, you know exactly when your heel started hurting due to rolling your ankle or landing hard on the back of your heel. Whether you’re dealing with constant heel pain, heel pain when walking, or something that comes and goes with no long-term relief, our physical therapists can help.
Having a medical professional examine your heel and discuss your medical history can be the key to an accurate diagnosis and treatment plan, rather than self-medicating heel pain symptoms with varying degrees of success. In many cases, a few simple interventions can alleviate the root cause of your pain, even without medication.
How physical therapy can help treat heel pain
The feet and legs are full of interconnected muscle tissue and ligaments, which can often play a role in treating and relieving heel pain. During physical therapy treatments for heel pain, our physical therapists might use a number of techniques to stretch, strengthen, and mobilize the affected foot to achieve a number of goals. Techniques we may employ in our facility or an at-home treatment plan include:
- Manual physical therapy
- Gait analysis and recommendations
- Personalized flexibility training
- Shoe or orthotic recommendations
Physical therapy is a holistic treatment method with a large body of medical research to back up its evidence-based efficacy. In many cases, treatment aims to improve long-term health outcomes no matter the type of heel pain experienced, whether a recent development or a chronic problem.
Find heel pain relief soon
To learn more about how physical therapy could help you get back to the life you want to live without pain, request an appointment online or call our nearest clinic location to schedule a same-day or next-day appointment.
