Doc On The Run Podcast

This is the thing I came up with when I actually was thinking about what I do differently with runners now that I've been for about a decade, basically focusing just on injured runners, what do I do differently than when I had a normal practice where I saw everybody with any kind of foot problem? Let's think about what happens when you decide to run a marathon. Nobody just wakes up and says, I thi...

Today's episode actually comes from something I read in one of the running forums where someone actually was saying that they were confused. They had been to see a couple of different doctors and had a couple of different recommendations because they had heel pain. The heel pain was in a little bit of an unusual area, the heel pain wasn't exactly on the bottom, the heel pain wasn't exactly on the...

Several years ago I had the honor of speaking with Gary and interviewing him for an episode of the Doc On The Run Podcast, called From 400 Pounds To Running 100 Miles. At one point in his life Gary, was seriously overweight and weighed about 400 pounds. But he was able to not only lose that weight, he became a 100 mile ultramarathon finisher and even did Leadville. Gary's not just an incredible at...

Let's say you have this aching pain in the ball of your foot. You've been running and when you run, you get some sort of weird aching soreness in the ball of the foot. You just know it's in the middle of the ball of the foot and it hurts more when you run and it hurts kind of after you run. Well, you go see a doctor. They look at you, they poke around, and they say, "I think you have a Morton's ne...

I was just giving a talk recently at the IFAF where I was talking about protocols that I use with injured runners to help them get back to activity after common foot and ankle injuries that happen to runners. The thing is, and what I was telling them is there are a few things that I use as protocols. When I say my protocol or a doctor says protocol for a stress fracture is six weeks in a boot or t...

If you're a runner and you think you have a grade 5 stress fracture because your radiology report said that or some doctor told you that, well, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is, is that you don't even have a stress fracture if you have a grade 5 stress fracture. It's not a stress fracture at all. The bad news is, is a grade 5 stress fracture, is what we call a non-union wh...

What are the three best ways to diagnose extensor tenosynovitis in runners? Well, it's pretty simple. They're really three ways that I think are effective and they can work, all of them. It's not necessarily true that one is better than another, but they all three can work. Today on the Doc On The Run podcast, we're talking about something really simple, it's the three best methods for diagnosing...

The way that I thought about this episode today is that I just got off the phone, I was on a consultation with a runner and he has a plantar plate injury and he was planning on getting an injection to help the plantar plate sprain heal a little bit faster. He asked me a question that really stopped me in my tracks. He said, "How long should I give it before I throw in the towel?" I thought, well,...

This is a great question that I got from somebody on a call who actually signed up and enrolled in the plantar plate class for runners. He was going through the plantar plate course and he was actually trying to figure out what to do, and he was going to jumpstart the healing process by using a fracture walking boot. He tried it on and he noticed that he was feeling some pressure because the insid...

I recently got a call from someone who had a son who was in cross country and he's been having some trouble. He's had several weeks of not running, and she wanted to get some advice on what to do. I got an interesting response via email, where she wanted to know what free advice I had for her son. First of all, I don't give advice when I don't know what the problem is. I didn't really know the sto...

Believe it or not, most of the time when I see a runner, either on webcam or in their home, and they have shin splints, and they've been given a fracture walking boot, they need the fracture walking boot and maybe even more. But what that really tells me when a doctor says you have shin splints but you need a boot, that it's really that the doctor is uncertain about the actual diagnosis, because i...

I was just lecturing at the IFAF meeting in Lake Tahoe and I was giving a couple of different lectures on running injuries, and one of them was about the protocols that I use with injured runners so that they can maintain their fitness, stay fit, stay active, and keep running. One of the doctors asked me about how I make these decisions and I explained to them was that the worst piece of advice I...

Today's episode is going to be a good one for you to listen to, if you've been told that you have a tibial stress fracture, or if you just think you might have a tibial stress fracture. If you get a tibial stress fracture, the chances are really good that the doctor's going to do something to really restrict your running, and potentially your ability to move around at all. For example, if you get...

One of the phrases I often tell injured runners is that “nothing in medicine is free.” For every potential treatment that might help some particular injury, you pay for it in risk. A fracture walking boot is one of the simplest and most-often-prescribed treatments for overtraining injuries in runners. And although fracture walking boots maybe inexpensive, treating your running injury with one is d...

Today's episode actually comes from a question sent in by Shay. She said, "I have a plantar plate complete tear and I had surgery on my left foot in October 2019. So that was a couple years ago. I'm running with some new issues in the right calf, but the main thing I want to learn is how this injury occurs. I'm really afraid of it happening to my right foot." I talk to injured runners all the time...

This weekend I was lecturing at the International Foot & Ankle Foundation meeting in lake Tahoe, and I was lecturing on running injuries. At the beginning of that lecture, I was asking the group of doctors there and I said, "Well, if you had a runner with a fourth metatarsal stress fracture and they had this level of pain and this level of disability and this level of complaint about it, how long...

I just got off the phone with a runner who had a plantar plate sprain. He was out on a run, he got a plantar plate sprain. I saw him, I helped him understand what to do and what I showed him to do was exactly the same stuff I show you in the plantar plate sprain course. He was doing much better, but he had a great question. His question was, "When is my plantar plate sprain really healed enough th...

Yesterday I was giving a lecture at the International Foot & Ankle Foundation meeting in Lake Tahoe. The topic was on protocols for return to running after recovering from over training injuries. One of the most important points I was trying to make to the doctors in that session was that fitness is transient. Fitness is only present in the presence of growth. If you're an injured runner this is t...

One of the worst injuries you can actually get if you're a runner is a plantar plate ligament sprain. The plantar plate ligament is a very small ligament on the bottom of the foot, where the toe attaches to the metatarsal phalangeal joint, right at the ball of the foot. These can happen for lots of different reasons but it's a very small structure and the unfortunate reality is, is that every sing...

I talk to injured runners all the time, and what I see is there are some runners who are kind of over the hump. They've started figuring out that they're injured and they're going to have to do a whole lot of work to actually get back to running quickly. Then there are other runners I see who are basically just demoralized and depressed because they're stuck in a rut. Are you an injured runner or...

I got a question from a runner who's had a metatarsal stress fracture who's very frustrated, who's trying to figure out how to get back to running. He went and saw a doctor and he was told that he had a stress fracture and the doctor told him to take some time off of running. Then he started watching some YouTube videos, started listening to some podcasts, and then asked me a very serious question...

I just got off a consultation call with a runner who called me for a second opinion, and she had an injury. She actually said that a doctor told her she wasn't built to be a runner. I'm not built to be a runner. Is that true? What does a runner look like? Well, that's what we're talking about today on the Doc On The Run podcast.

In this podcast episode we’re talking about one of my favorite false beliefs. It's that rest equals recovery. This sort of makes sense to most people, but then runners get confused and wind up calling me for second opinions because they're still a little confused when they hear this. Rest equals recovery. That's what we're talking about today on the Doc On The Run podcast.

In this episode we're talking about whether or not you can't run just because you got a running injury and this is a thing I hear all the time from injured runners. They call me because they're frustrated because they're runners, they got a metatarsal stress fracture, or a plantar fasciitis, or a plantar plate ligament sprain, or Achilles tendonitis. They say, “My doctor said I can't run because I...

A running injury is always bad. No runner is ever happy to have a stress fracture or to have plantar fasciitis or Achilles tendonitis...or something worse. If you get an overtraining injury and you're trying to recover, but you're not getting better fast, you need to stop and evaluate.  The biggest problem I see with most injured runners is that they half do the recovery. You stop running. You sto...