Why Did My Heel Pain Come Back?

You spent weeks – months even – doing everything you were told to get rid of your heel pain. You stopped wearing those shoes you knew were bad for you. You made yourself stretch every morning and night, just as you were told. You rested and iced and strapped and did everything right – or so you thought. Until one day – months after you thought it was gone for good – you put your foot down and that ache came creeping back with a vengeance.

So, why did it come back?

To answer this, you must first know that there are plenty of causes of heel pain. It can be anything from poor footwear, impact injury, poor foot biomechanics, a sudden increase in activity, a change of running terrain – so many more! The commonality being that the underlying soft tissues are damaged, usually through overloading and strain. This causes pain and swelling which you feel when you put your foot down.

This pain is frustrating, uncomfortable, it limits your daily activities and you just want it to resolve. This is where treating the damaged tissues and musculature comes in – and this is great. It gets the result you need at the time and eases your pain. However:

The issue is that so much of treatment is focused on healing the damaged tissue to eliminate your pain, that people often forget that there was an underlying cause of the pain and injury which needs to be addressed too or it may happen again.

Often, a large contributing factor to the development of heel pain is faulty foot biomechanics. That means that when you walk, something abnormal about the way your bones, joints and tissues are working overloads and overuses certain structures and this increased strain causes damage. If your foot biomechanics aren’t altered and corrected, those tissues will likely keep being strained and damaged and you’ll keep fighting the same battle.

This is why our physiotherapists in Toowoomba and Warwick will try to find out exactly what caused and exacerbated your heel pain and address that cause, as well as treating the current damage, so that you don’t have to keep putting up with pain again and again. We do this because we believe that you should feel great about your feet, be performing at your best and be able to realise your full potential now and in the future. Pain is not a normal part of a happy and healthy life and shouldn’t be put up with.

We help tens of thousands of happy patients in Toowoomba every year and would love to help you too. Our friendly team would love to hear from you – give them a call on 07 4638 3022