Doc On The Run Podcast

When you're recovering from a running injury, the most important thing you can track is your pain. Changes in pain level is what tells you whether or not you should move from one activity level to the next. Although many doctors will ask you in your initial interview, "What is your pain on a scale of one to 10? How much does it hurt?" They very rarely ask you many more specifics about that pain. T...

How is it that a runner can actually have a stress fracture that was never even broken in the first place?  Well, this is a real-world situation that I had with a runner who called me for a second opinion.  It was a runner who thought he had a stress fracture, who even had an MRI that showed a stress fracture. The doctor said it was a stress fracture. But it wasn't actually a stress fracture at al...

The number one question I get on social media from runners, whether it's a direct message or an email, or even a comment on a YouTube video is: "My doctor said I can't run. Is it okay for me to run my race this weekend?"  And I'll always scratch my head a little bit and wonder, "Does this person really think it makes sense to ask a complete stranger, who has absolutely no idea about what's going o...

This episode comes from a medical conference last week. I was asked to give a couple of different lectures on running injuries at the International Foot and Ankle Foundation meeting in Sonoma, California.  One of the sessions was about runner's heel pain and the differences between normal everyday patients and runners. Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast, we're talking about the top five differenc...

No runner wants pain.  However, when injured and trying to recover, pain is actually one of the most useful tools at your disposal. I often tell injured runners and doctors at medical conferences something you should think about: Pain is the most abundant and most underutilized evaluation tool available to runners when they're trying to get back to running. Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast, we'...

This episode comes from a lecture I was giving at a medical conference just last week. One of the lectures was on the differences between stress response, stress reaction, and stress fractures in athletes. There are really just a few main points doctors need to understand when treating runners with stress fractures. Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast, we're talking about the top three stress frac...

There is no hope on a downward slope.  I know that sounds really negative and terrible, but it's true.   A recovering runner recently called for a called me for a second opinion telemedicine visit. Her doctor had told her to wait...to wait to get better. In fact, she waited for 12 weeks and she did exactly what she was told: nothing. She did no exercise for 12 weeks. If you just think about the la...

In the last week alone I had telemedicine calls with two different runners with different types of stress fractures who asked what it means when they have no pain, but an MRI that "shows a stress fracture, but no crack in the bone." It gets really confusing when it comes to classifying stress fractures based only on medical imaging like x-rays or MRI.  If you wonder... Can I run if my MRI shows a...

This episode comes from a discussion I had recently with a recovering runner during a telemedicine visit. She was asking me what to do.  She is stuck in a cycle of getting frustrated, she gets better, and then gets injured again when she actually gets back to running. She seems to have a tendency to get re-injured, with different injuries. To recover from injury, you have to make sure you don't ro...

I got a call from a runner who asked me about staying fit while training with a femoral neck stress fracture. What is interesting to me is that this person has seen a qualified sports medicine orthopedist who told her that she should not train or should not run with this femoral neck stress fracture. I'm a podiatrist, I treat foot and ankle problems specifically in runners, but I do not treat femo...

Recently I was interviewed on a television program about telemedicine, who it helps and who it doesn't help. I do a lot of telemedicine visits with athletes. Meeting with a doctor via telemedicine can be very helpful because you can get quick access. You can get immediate answers from an expert.  There are three kinds of runners for whom telemedicine is actually incredibly helpful.  Today on the D...

This episode comes from a question sent in by a runner who was listening to the Doc On The Run podcast.  This is a runner who had an Achilles tendon issue and was recovering and getting back to running.  He has recovered enough that he is back to running, he's doing better, he's running without any pain, but he wanted to incorporate some strength training in the form of either hill repeats or runn...

I was just doing a telemedicine consult with a runner for a second opinion. He has so much pain in his foot he actually can't even walk on the foot, much less run on it. One of the questions I asked him was whether or not he was doing single leg squats to try to maintain some of the strength in his non-injured foot. He actually said he wasn't doing any single leg strengthening because he didn't wa...

A bunion deformity is a really common problem, and a bunion is when your big toe moves over and starts pushing against the second toe. Over time that can get bad enough that the big toe actually sits on top or underneath the second toe. Now because this thing is so common, whenever you get a bump of any kind around that area, people often think that they have bunions, and that's exactly what happe...

I just did a telemedicine call with a runner who had a very interesting complaint. This  was heel pain and heel pain in itself is not really interesting, because most of the people who get heel pain have plantar fasciitis, but this was one of those cases where somebody had heel pain that was not plantar fasciitis, and was definitely something else. I actually had this exact same problem myself dur...

I was doing a telemedicine, second opinion consultation with an elite triathlete who got a stress fracture and this is actually a very common sort of discussion that I have with runners who schedule telemedicine visits, who call me for coaching calls and second opinion advice. This guy has been athletic his entire life and he was ramping up for an event and then he got a metatarsal stress fracture...

A question came up during a recent telemedicine visit I was doing with a runner who has hallux rigidus. He wanted to know whether or not it was a good idea or a bad idea to inject the big toe joint with cortisone to treat his hallux rigidus. The doctor is basically looking at your circumstances, trying to figure out what you really want short-term and long-term, and then figuring out whether or no...

This episode comes from a question sent in by one of the Doc On The Run Podcast listeners, and she wanted to know whether or not it was okay to jump rope if she has shin splints? Well, the short answer is, you can do whatever you want. You just have to be willing to pay the consequences.  You can have a couple of different consequences from jumping rope with shin splints. But if you're sure that y...

I was just doing a telemedicine call with a runner with a long history of plantar fasciitis, that has not been getting better. She had been doing stretches, icing, and even an injection of corticosteroids around the plantar fascia.  We were doing a second opinion telemedicine call to talk about what's really going on. We talked about her whole history. She had been keeping track and has kept a pai...

Just this morning I was interviewed on a television program about telemedicine.  Since I have been doing telemedicine for a little more than 10 years they invited me to come on as an expert to talk about the changes in telemedicine resulting from the pandemic. During the interview, we were discussing all the different ways telemedicine can be more helpful than in-office visits. At the end, I was a...

This episode comes from a discussion I just had with a runner during a telemedicine visit where I was helping her figure out a second opinion and what to do about her hallux rigidus. So she was very confused because she's been diagnosed with hallux rigidus. She's been told that that's what's causing the pain in her big toe joint when she runs and she was a little confused because she said the doct...

This episode comes from a discussion I just had with a runner during a telemedicine visit. This person brought up a great idea that really seemed like it would make a great episode and something that' would be really helpful for you to understand.   When you get injured, your goal is to actually recover as fast as possible and maintain your running fitness while you heal that specific injury.   No...

On this episode, we're just giving you a quick tip on how you can actually reduce some of the stress and strain on the plantar fascial ligament when you have plantar fasciitis and you want to keep running. Now everybody knows, if you stop running you're going to lose your running fitness. That's not really confusing. That's not hard to understand. But what you really need to understand is that pla...

The number one question I get on social media is can I run with this injury?  So the problem with this is that whenever I get this question, whenever somebody says, "Can I run?" what's really never disclosed to me in that runners question is how bad is it?  The thing that determines whether or not you can run is whether or not you can reduce the stress and strain on that injured piece of tissue en...

I just got off a telemedicine second opinion call with a runner who thought she had a stress fracture. She got an MRI. Then her doctor said she has “fraying” of several plantar plate ligaments. She wanted to know if this was serious. Part of the difficulty lies in determining the severity of plantar plate injury and making the call on when you can run. Most runners want a clear answer. Often times...