My Foot Hurts :(

[yeswonderful]

I've had this problem off and on. In my left foot, in the front of the ball of the foot, just behind my toes (sort of where the ball of the foot drops down to the base of the toes, if that makes sense), I get a pain when running up hills or if I am going at a fast pace and am using more of a forefoot rather than midfoot strike. When I'm on flats or downhills and my strike is more midfoot, it doesn't hurt so much, or at all, as I'm not pushing off from that part of my foot.
It feels almost like a bruise, but there is no visible mark or swelling. I run with Vivobarefoot Breathos on the trails and Lucy Lites of the same brand for the road. It also hurts when I'm walking barefoot on the wood floors in my house. It hurts to the touch as well if I press on it.
As I said, I've had this problem before and solved it by wearing my old, non-minimal (clunky, horrible) trail shoes for all my runs for a month. I would rather avoid doing this again. I'm currently training for a half marathon for the beginning of June, so I'd like to keep running if possible.
Suggestions? I can give more details if need be.

 

[Barefoot TJ]

The docs have been a bit busy lately. I hope to see them here soon. Thanks for your patience.

 

[Dr James Stoxen DC]

Hi there,

Sorry for the delay. It's a little bit difficult to really pinpoint the location of your pain with your description. What you might want to do is take a picture or video of the exact location and somehow upload it to the site. Also we really need a video of you walking to really help you the most You sound like a pretty serious runner so I think it may be worth it to throw a video up as you are going to get some free advice from myself and maybe the other doctors that is pretty specific.

When I examine patients to determine the cause of pain, evaluating the area of the pain is really not as fruitful as you may think.

Is there too much motion in that area or not enough?
For instance, if you have 33 joints in your foot that must move in order for this structure to safely absorb the impact forces of the landing, if any one or a few of these joints are stiff or locked, those stiff or locked joints may not even hurt. What normally happens is that a lack of movement in one area of the body forces the other joints that are moving to have to move excessively to make up for the lack of movement in that particular area. Sometimes the area that moves excessively is the area that hurts. What I have found is that the area's spent move too much or beyond their range are the ones that hurt more.

When running, the majority of the impact forces absorbed by the first and second toe. What I have found clinically in examining patients that have pain in the area of the big toe, is that there is either a stiff or locked joint in the region, stiff meaning muscle spasms, and lacks meaning that joint normally has a flex but it needs to be released.

Why not submit a video of your walk so we can see how you walk? Its really easy!
What we really need to do here is look at a videotape of your gait analysis to determine how the mass of your body is rolling over your foot.

Instructions:
• Get into some shorts, take off your socks and shoes.
• Have someone stand 12 feet away facing you with the camera pointing at your waist to your feet.
• Start recording the camera for 2 seconds while you keep equal weight on both feet.
• Then walk at a normal pace towards the camera about five or six steps or about 3 feet from the camera.
• Then turn around and walk away from the camera to the same starting point.
• Turnaround, and walk the same path towards the camera as fast as you can.
• Then back to the original point.

This all takes about 30 seconds or less.

• Post this video on either Dailymotion; Facebook; Liveleak; Metacafe;Vimeo or YouTube.
• Get the link for the video.
• go to the top of the site and select the green video clip which allows you to enter the link from the video.
• Your video will show up on the site like these below

When we look at the video we can see why the foot is not moving the way it is designed to move. The video makes this a lot clearer. In the meantime, we do really not know the exact area of your pain nor do we have enough information to be able to determine why you have this pain.

My treatment approach really doesn't address painful conditions per se. What my approach to treating conditions such as foot pain, toe pain, knee pain, hip pain, low back pain, any condition that is not healing is locate the joints that are not moving and release those stiff areas to allow the normal natural motion to return back to the joints. For instance a lot of patients that have big toe pain, there problem is that the other joints around the big toe are not moving causing a compensating movements to damage that joint in the big toe.

So just in case you don't want to go through the trouble of posting of video tape of your walk, the next best advice I can give you is to use your hands, more specifically the pad of your thumb, and find the painful sore muscles and to press and hold deep tissue treatment to these painful muscles. Just grab a seat on the floor and give your foot a hand.
How to Self Adjust Your Toes
Deep Tissue Treatment Under The Big Toe And Second Toe
Deep Tissue Treatment Above The Big Toe And Second Toe
Scissor Stretching Of The Feet