Foot pain that does not respond to over-the-counter medication or cold therapy may need a podiatrist’s intervention. They will examine the injured foot and ankle, take X-rays and determine a diagnosis.
Athletes benefit from podiatry care that supports their performance and helps prevent injuries. Podiatrists can provide individualised muscle strengthening and exercise programs that promote musculoskeletal health and enhance athletic performance.
Muscle Strengthening and Exercise Programs
Whether you are recovering from a foot injury or just want to boost your sports performance, it is important that you have strong, healthy feet. Muscle strength plays a crucial role in stability, support and reducing stress on joints and bones of the lower legs and feet. An individualised muscle strengthening and exercise program can help prevent injuries from occurring.
Depending on your injury, an Exercise Physiologist will develop a program combining capacity building exercises, load optimisation and functional movement patterns. They will also incorporate health and lifestyle advice to help you make positive and beneficial lifestyle changes.
Exercise Physiologists are all highly experienced in working as part of a multi-disciplinary team and regularly communicate with other health professionals such as physiotherapists, podiatrists, Myotherapies and GPs to ensure you receive the best treatment possible. When working with your EP, it is essential that you are honest and open about your pain level, medical history and any physical limitations.
Additionally, Their experienced podiatrist enjoys helping patients overcome foot and ankle injuries with a patient-focused, holistic approach. They love incorporating footwear assessments into treatments and believe these play a huge role in injury prevention. They are especially passionate about diabetic foot management and prevention, as well as musculoskeletal injuries of the foot and lower leg.
Footwear Assessments
What you wear on your feet can determine a lot about how your foot and lower limbs move throughout the day. Podiatrists are able to assess your current footwear and recommend suitable options. Whether it be offloading pressure on a painful area by changing your shoe type, strapping tape to improve the fit of your shoes, orthotics or insoles to improve your arch height, footwear can be an important tool in preventing injuries.
It is well documented that footwear can be a significant contributor to the aetiology of foot pain, however footwear assessments continue to be practitioner specific with limited guidance to direct advice. Several assessment tools have been critiqued through expert rounds with a focus on their ability to provide clinically relevant information to guide footwear recommendations for patients.
The final product of the expert group was a clinically focused footwear assessment tool with good inter and intra reliability. The tool consisted of five themes with the most emphasis placed on the ability to assess footwear characteristics that are directly associated with foot health. The footwear assessment tool is a good starting point for the development of more specific footwear evaluation tools, including ones that can be applied in different patient groups.
Gait Analysis
Using technology to identify biomechanical abnormalities in your movement patterns can help prevent injuries. Gait analysis is a video-based method of assessing the way you walk or run and is typically performed by a licensed physical therapist. It involves filming you running from three positions, front, back, and side, and analyzing the video footage in slow motion, frame-by-frame.
The results can pinpoint specific problems such as foot strike pattern or pelvic alignment that can cause imbalances, and offer guidance on how to improve your running form. Depending on the outcome of your gait analysis, your physiotherapist may recommend certain strength and stability exercises for your core, hips, glutes, and lower legs to reduce imbalances. These exercises can include squats, lunges, and hip bridges.
Understanding your gait cycle can also help you improve your running efficiency and reduce injury risk. For example, your gait analysis can reveal if you have a heel strike, midfoot strike, or forefoot strike that can affect your running efficiency and impact on your risk of injury. Your gait analysis can also help you determine whether your stride length is too short or too long, which can impact your running speed and cadence (number of steps per minute).
Gait analysis can benefit people from all walks of life. Runners, people who walk for work or exercise in general, and even those with foot conditions can all benefit from gait analysis to help prevent future injuries.
Foot Health Education
Foot Health Education (FHE) is the use of expert podiatry knowledge and opinion to encourage patients to take a proactive approach to their foot health in order to prevent or manage any foot problems. FHE may be delivered through a number of methods, including written or verbal information, foot self-care and/or foot care interventions.
Providing patients with appropriate and timely information about their foot health is crucial to effective self-management of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) related foot-related pathology [1, 2]. RA-related foot problems can affect up to 80 % of people living with RA, even when the disease is in remission.
Injury management often involves restoring mobility and range of motion, which can be affected by pain, swelling and muscle weakness. Podiatrists often incorporate an individualised programme of specific muscles strengthening and stretching exercises into their treatment plans, helping to improve stability and reduce the likelihood of further injuries in the future.
In addition, diabetic patients are at a high risk of developing diabetes-related foot conditions such as neuropathy, arthropathy and vasculopathy. It is recommended that they check their feet daily, moisturize them and seek professional help if problems arise. The IFHEF has developed threshold clinical and education standards that NHS managers can use to ensure their NHS podiatry support workforce are trained appropriately to perform these foot care treatments.
