Foot pain can present in a variety of ways and can be somewhat complex to summarize briefly. The foot is intimately connected to how you move through your lower leg and ankle, as well as how you transfer load from the body onto the foot. Sometimes there can be connections up higher in the chain of the body that present with foot pain.
In general, foot pain itself can be caused by a few different causes, and these are:
Overuse injuries
This can often occur with repetitive sports such as running where people can develop plantar fasciitis, heel pain with underlying heel spurs, arch pain, or sometimes big toe pain. Another common overuse problem when you have poor mechanics of movement in your foot is a metatarsalgia, sometimes related to a morton’s neuroma, where you can get pain on the bottom of your forefoot and sometimes pins and needles into the toes if the nerve is pinched or under pressure.
Impact injuries from sport or work
If you have landed from a height at work, or while working at home such as cleaning the eves, or landed hard playing a sport like volleyball, you can have an impact injury to the joints as well as trauma to the soft tissue (muscles, ligament and fascia). There can occasionally be trauma to the underlying joint causing a bone bruise, or underlying osteochondral lesion. Alternately, you can end up with a small fracture in your foot, such as at the base of the 5th metatarsal bone.
Sprains and Strains
Going over on your ankle in sport or while hiking or walking on uneven ground can cause sprains to the ligaments to the ankle and the foot. The foot and ankle work together so after often injured together. Sometimes you can get a slight subluxation of one of the foot bones, which will require some help to get back into place and moving better so you can feel better.
Osteoarthritis, or wear and tear changes in the foot and ankle
Can result from previous injury, poor mechanics or poor footwear, or repetitive impact sports. This is very common at the base of the bog toes as well, and can lead to an inability to walk well and push off of the big toe.
