Doc On The Run Podcast

What would happen if you did this?  Walk into your doctor's office and say,  "Hey, look, I'm a runner. My situation is complicated. I really want to train. I really want to get back to running. I would like you to take an hour, sit down with me and let's really work through this so that I can get back to training." Right now when you picture yourself going into your doctor's office and asking for...

If you're a runner and you have pain in the ball of the foot, especially around your second toe joint where the toe attaches to the foot, you may be suffering from a plantar plate sprain. Many years ago, if you had this kind of pain, it would probably have just been called "capsulitis" by your doctor. But a plantar plate injury is something that has become more recognized as a distinct pathology i...

Every time a runner calls me who has a plantar plate sprain, they're trying to figure out how they can know for sure they actually do have a plantar plate sprain. They often also want to know how bad the plantar plate injury really is.  When you're a runner, the problem with plantar plate sprains is that many doctors will offer a standardized cookie cutter approach. I most often help runners get b...

After years of doing the Doc On The Run Podcast and making YouTube videos to explain overtraining injuries that can interfere with running, I have gotten a lot of interesting questions.    We've had over a million views on YouTube, and over 300,000 downloads of the podcast which all equal a lot of questions.   Mostly overtraining injury questions center on a search for a shortcut. Many injured run...

If you are a runner and you have an injury, my guess is that you are most worried about how long you will need to stop running. When people call me for a webcam consultation or an in-person second opinion evaluation, I see runners making the same mistakes over and over. If you've made one of these mistakes, don't beat yourself up too much. There is not that much you can do about the past. But you...

Last week I was lecturing at the International Foot & Ankle Foundation medical conference in Hawaii. Specifically, I had been asked to give a couple of talks on treating running injuries. During the day I was moderating the surgery and sports medicine session, Dr. Gary Labianco was giving a lecture on Metatarsal Fractures. He said something that led us to today's episode.  It was genius! "If you w...

Growth happens outside of your comfort zone. This is true for both emotional growth and physical growth. Very few patients who call me for help with a stress fracture are not really upset. They all feel like they wasted months of time with treatments that either didn’t help, or made them worse. They are still not running. All of these runners seem to express the same concern, the fastest path back...

I just did a consultation call with an injured runner who had a really interesting history with his heel pain. There was some concern that he might actually have a calcaneal stress fracture and not a plantar fascia issue.    In case you don't know, "calcaneal stress fracture" is just the medical term for a stress fracture in the heel bone.   The heel bone is the largest bone in your foot, and runn...

If you have this pain on the outside of your foot near the cuboid bone, you might start worrying you have a cuboid stress fracture. Cuboid stress fractures are rare.    In fact, cuboid stress fractures account for  less than 1% of all the stress fractures that happen in the foot in athletes.  But there is something more common that can feel like a cuboid stress fracture.    Doctors call it "capsul...

If you have been running with a nagging aching pain on the outside of your foot, just in front of your ankle, you might think you have a cuboid stress fracture.    If you then get an x-ray of the foot and it shows a tiny little extra bone sitting just next to the cuboid, well that bone has a specific name and it is called an Os Peroneum.    Sometimes you can get pain from the Os Peroneum, sometime...

If you call me and you tell me, I think I have a cuboid stress fracture, the first thing I'd say is...pretty unlikely.    In fact, cuboid stress fractures are less than 1% of all the stress fractures that happen in the foot in athletes.    So they really are very rare.    One thing you can get that's actually much more common is arthritis within the joint. That's also pretty rare, but you can tell...

"Subluxed Cuboid" is just a cuboid sitting slightly out of position.  Stress fracture of the cuboid is very different from a subluxed cuboid.  If you have this aching pain on the side of your foot, and you've been told maybe it's "cuboid syndrome" or a "subluxed cuboid," but it's not getting better, you could have a thing called a cuboid stress fracture.    The reason you probably weren't told it...

If you are a runner and you've had pain on the outside of your ankle or the outside of your foot, kind of near the heel you may have been told that you have peroneus longus tendinitis.  Sometimes peroneus longus tendinitis is the wrong diagnosis. You might actually have a cuboid stress fracture.  Which one's worse?    Well, I'll tell you that in terms of really destroying your ability to run, defi...

If you're a runner who has been told that you have a cuboid stress fracture, you might be worried that there's an actual crack in the bone.   A visible crack on x-ray is what I think of when I picture a truly fractured cuboid bone. There is a huge difference between a cuboid bone with a crack, vs. without a crack.    The cuboid bone is an irregular bone. It's small, but it's important. It sits rig...

If you are a runner and you get an aching pain on the top of the foot, and it's not getting better, you might have this weird thing called a cuboid stress fracture.  Cuboid stress fractures are often misdiagnosed as an "ankle sprain" or "foot sprain."  The cuboid bone is positioned in a way that it can get squished in between the other foot bones.  Cuboid stress fractures can cause a lot of troubl...

Just today I was seeing a runner during a house call and he had a neuroma. So, understandably, he put a neuroma pad in his shoes. When he was running, his neuroma suddenly got way worse! I asked him what happened.   He said, "I moved it a little bit. I moved it from where you put it before and I thought it would take more pressure off, but I think it actually made it worse and it really flared it...

I was just speaking at a medical conference in Las Vegas, and of course I flew on a plane to get there.    To me, as a podiatrist, the most dangerous two spots in the airport are in the security screening line.  I don't like standing on those yellow footprints in the security scanner spots because I think it's a little gross to stand without shoes, where thousands of people a day step barefoot.  I...

If you are a runner with a painful tendon or ligament issue like chronic plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendonitis or plantar plate sprain that just won't get better, you might have done some research into injections and found a thing called a PRP or "platelet-rich plasma injection." The way that PRP injections are marketed by some doctors, you might think that it's mostly unicorns and fairy dust, bu...

The #1 concern all injured runners face is time.  How long will I have to use crutches. How long will it take the surgery to heal. How long will I have to wear a fracture walking boot.  How long will I have to stop running. How much running fitness will I lose in that time. I feel like most of the runners who call me for a second opinion over webcam are making a critical mistake. They are hiding f...

If you have ever run with a rock in your shoe, you know just how painful a little pebble can be. Sometimes a callus forms in a way that it gets rock hard and starts to get embedded in the skin. Painful calluses can literally feel like a rock taped to your foot. The problem is that callus removal pads don’t work. Using a pumice stone to shave down the surface of the callus doesn’t really help much...

The whole key to rapid running injury recovery is to proceed with confidence. If you are using a fracture walking boot or crutches, you must do so confident the boot is necessary...and not based on guesswork. If you are starting range of motion exercises for a torn tendon, you must be confident you can work past pain, without worrying you might cause a re-injury. You need to make sure that you kno...

One time at a medical conference, an expert lecturing on biomechanics said,  “When a runner develops Hallux Rigidus, he becomes a swimmer instead of a runner.” Most of the doctors in the audience laughed. I really didn't think that was very funny. I actually have hallux rigidus myself, and it doesn't disrupt my running. It is true Hallux Rigidus can cause pain and swelling in the big toe joint. If...

I was just giving 3 lectures on running injuries at a medical conference in Las Vegas.   As is often the case, after one of my lectures one of the physicians in the audience approached me in the hallway to ask a question. What do you do with activity level when somebody has an old fracture where the bone was broken long ago? The runner recently had a re-injury at that spot. It has been painful, it...

When you have two painful problems in different parts of the same foot, things can get complicated. I recently had a call with an injured runner with a couple of different problems.  On the outside of his foot, between the third and fourth toes, he has a painful neuroma.  The other problem is that he's got bursitis. The inflamed bursa is in a completely different place, no where near the irritated...

I just got off a call with a runner who needed a second opinion with his running injury recovery. He had a fracture and it has been improving. But because it was painful and swollen, he was still icing it daily. At his last follow-up appointment, the doctor actually said, "I think you're good enough to actually start cycling at this point, to get back a little of your running fitness." So, the que...