Top 5 Recommendations That Help With Foot Pain

We use our feet for many things every day. When they hurt and distract us from our daily lives, they make it difficult, uncomfortable, and even impossible to work, have fun, or rest. It’s natural to seek out what helps with foot pain, even if it’s only mild or temporary.

Fortunately, there are several ways to give you foot pain relief. Here are the top five recommendations for how to relieve your sore feet.

Causes of Foot Pain

There are several different possible causes of foot pain. Conditions and injuries of the bones, tendons, ligaments, or nerves, inflammation of the joints, and poor blood circulation are just a few conditions that can cause foot pain.

• Arch: Flat feet
• Arteries: Raynaud’s disease, cold feet
• Bone: Bunions, bone spurs, Haglund’s deformity, hammertoe, mallet toe, metatarsalgia, Paget’s disease of bone
• Infection: Osteomyelitis, plantar warts
• Injured bone: Avulsion fracture, broken toe, broken foot, stress fractures
• Inflammation: Bursitis, gout, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, reactive arthritis, retrocalcaneal bursitis, septic arthritis
• Nerves: Diabetic neuropathy, Morton’s neuroma, peripheral neuropathy
• Skin: Corns, callouses, ingrown toenails
• Tendons or ligaments: Achilles tendinitis, Achilles tendon rupture, tendinitis, tarsal tunnel syndrome, plantar fasciitis

In short, foot conditions can be divided into the following types of foot pain:

• Exercise or injury
• Poorly fitting shoes
• Infections
• Health conditions or abnormalities

Foot Pain Under the Foot

One main cause of foot pain under foot is overuse or improper form during exercise causing injury. Another is wearing poorly fitting shoes for tasks that require standing and walking for long periods.

People with flat feet can experience pain in the arch of their feet. Also, people with metatarsalgia experience pain and inflammation in the balls of their feet, and people with plantar fasciitis experience pain in their heels.

5 Ways to Relieve Foot Pain

Once you know the type of foot pain you are having and the cause, you can continue to a treatment plan with what helps with foot pain. These are the top five recommendations for how to relieve sore feet.

1. Rest, Apply Ice or Heat, and Elevate

When overuse or injury is causing you foot pain, your feet will benefit from rest and cold therapy. The cold alleviates swelling. Avoid the activities that make your foot pain worse, and apply ice to your feet for 15 to 20 minutes with 30 to 40 minutes off. Do this several times per day. You can also use over-the-counter pain medications.

When you have a condition that causes chronic foot pain or tense muscles, your feet will instead benefit from heat therapy. The heat will relax aching, tense muscles and stiff joints and is especially good for larger muscle groups. Apply heat for 15 minutes at a time with at least 30 minutes off.

Elevating the legs above the heart will promote easy blood flow to the heart. It will also decrease swelling and increase fresh blood circulation to the feet.

2. Get Better Shoes

Poorly fitting shoes exacerbate and can even cause many foot problems. An expert shoe fitting can find the perfect size and fit for your shoes every time.

Besides fit is the quality of the shoes. Even if your shoes fit well, you need them to be durable and comfortable. Finding quality footwear is a worthwhile investment for giving you easier, better function while maintaining style with shoes. There are also shoes for diabetics to reduce pressure points and decrease the risk of diabetic foot ulcers.

3. Stretch and Exercise Your Toes

Many people exercise with shoes on. But what about stretching and exercising in bare feet?

Toe spacing is a great way to stretch toes passively. You can use a hand to space the toes on each foot, or you can use toe spacers.

Toe stretching increases the flexibility in your toes, thereby reducing injury and pain. Lift a single toe at a time and alternate between lifting one and keeping the others down and keeping one down and lifting the others up.

Rolling out your foot using a tennis or other ball will break up tension. It will also desensitize the bottoms of your feet. Light but frequent rolling is superior to intense, infrequent rolling.

To improve arch strength, try pressing your toes into the ground. Doing so contracts your arch and improves the muscle tone in your feet. Using this exercise in conjunction with rolling out your feet also helps with flat feet.

There are two exercises for engaging larger muscle groups. Balancing exercises are helpful for improving core strength and preventing injuries from a lack of balance. Squatting stretches out the feet as well as the leg muscles, tendons, and ligaments.

4. Try Shoe Inserts

When you need a better shoe fitting for specific conditions, there are a variety of shoe inserts to choose from. Pads and cushions and arch supports are just a couple of examples. If you need support and compression for your legs and feet, consider specialty socks. And because everyone’s feet are different, custom orthotics exist to give you tailor-made medical devices. Consider also a custom fitting of diabetic shoes.

5. Look Into Professional Treatment

Skin and nail care of the feet can prevent many foot conditions. You have several treatment options for maintaining the health of your feet or alleviating foot pain. From a medical-style pedicure to nonsurgical care of ingrown toenails, you can get treatment for and prevention against foot fungus conditions, ingrown toenails, callouses, warts, ulcers, and plantar fasciitis. There is also heel pain laser therapy and foot pain shockwave therapy that can reduce heel pain, plantar fasciitis, and other painful foot conditions.

If you need to know more about what helps with foot pain, contact The Active Foot Store today.