- Hey Sakina, how about we talk about the three things you shouldn't do when you have heel pain today?
- Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.
- Yeah, look, heel pain can be a real drag. It may have just started as a little niggling pain in the morning when you get out of bed. Or it can progress on to being there all day and really sucking the enjoyment out of life. It can impact you at work making your days longer or when you come home and all you want to do is just sit down and give your feet a rest instead of getting out there and doing some exercise, walking the dog or playing with the kids. It's just a real bugabear, isn't it Sakina?
- Yeah, no it is.
- So what shouldn't you be doing when you get heel pain? Over to you, Sakina. What's the first one?
- So the first thing I'd say is just avoid wearing things like ballet flats and thongs and stuff like that. Cause that's not really giving your feet any support. But instead, like, you know you're wearing something that's a lot more supportive, something that's giving you arch support or something that's holding your heel in place and stuff like that.
- So what are some examples there?
- So I'd say like your joggers and your trainers and stuff like that. And it's hard though 'cause if you're wanting to wear dress shoes for work, for example, you can still find certain features to be looking out for in those shoes. But obviously the best type of shoe would be like a trainer or a jogger or something like that.
- How about Queensland where it's hot and sandal weather. Can we find, what features would you be looking for in a sandal?
- So I'd just be saying something that's like, you know look a bit more of that arch support, a bit of a heel cup there as well holding your heel in place a little bit there too. Something as well holding your foot down, like the forefoot down as well. So good a strap across there as well.
- Yeah, you want something firm so the foot's not having to work too hard.
- That's it, that's right, yeah.
- Brilliant. Well look, I'm going to jump in with the second thing that we shouldn't be doing, and that's wearing old worn out shoes. Old worn out shoes. They're going to make your feet work really hard and can contribute to that pain that you're getting in your feet. And what we often do with a lot of our patients is we'll actually start them getting new shoes and a lot of the time that helps their pain straight away.
- Yeah, no definitely.
- Yeah and gets them, gets them back going. So yeah, not wearing worn out shoes.
- Yeah, so I'd say the third tip would be probably not pushing through the pain. So like whenever you're taking on a new activity, and your body's trying to tell you, Hey, this is a lot, this is too much. Don't push through that pain. There's a good pain and we get that. But then there's a pain where you know that you're doing a bit too much. So I'd say when you get to that point, make sure you stop and you take a bit of rest. Sometimes it's better just to come in earlier to see us as opposed to pushing through that pain as well.
- Yeah and Sakina and I were discussing this before and I've got an extra half a tip here I think to take that little step further too. Like if you're starting to get a niggle, it's not the time to go and start a new exercise program. Don't go and start boot camp. Don't go and decide you want to move your 5K runs to 10k runs before you come and you know, you work on getting it fixed. Because adding in that extra load, it's a recipe for that heel pain getting a lot worse. So as I said earlier, what started out as a niggle can really become a problem all day long.
So that's a few tips for you to be avoiding when you're getting heel pain. Now in the clinic here, we're always happy to help our patients. We love helping people with heel pain. We see a lot of people with heel pain, don't we? So it's one of the number one conditions that we see.
So if you're trying some of these tips and they're not working for you, jump on the phone or jump on our website, make an appointment to come and see us.
So you can call us on 3820 6326, or online at feetology.com.au and make an appointment to come and see myself or Sakina and we'll get you on track, make sure you're doing all the right things to get on top of that heel pain so that you can be doing the things that you really love. Thank you.