Browse our articles and pages tagged with national. My FootDr brings the very best in Podiatry care to everyone in Australia.
We all know and have experienced that uncomfortable prickling, tingling, numbing sensation that we call pins and needles countless times – but why do we get pins and needles? And what can we do to help make the feeling go away so we can get on with our day?
Today, the My FootDr team are sharing the causes, considerations and treatments for pins and needles in the feet, which we medically refer to as paraesthesia – and there may be a lot more to it than you think!
If you have flat feet, knowing which insoles are right for your feet can be difficult and confusing. There are so many types out there, which may leave you with a lot more questions than answers, like:
These are great and valid questions, and our podiatrists have set out to answer them all by explaining what having flat feet really mean for you – and where insoles fit into the picture.
Every week, almost half of all Australians experience foot pain. As foot health experts here at My FootDr, this comes as no surprise – our feet support the entire weight of our bodies, and with hundreds of moving parts, the role of our feet is more complex than many of us realise. With our feet being a small but mighty collection of muscles, tendons, ligaments, bones and nerves – when something is overloaded, out of place or not functioning quite right, it can be an easy road to foot pain.
As pain in the feet is always the result of an underlying issue or fault, understanding the cause of the problem is key in relieving your symptoms, treating any damage, and helping prevent it from returning in the future. Here are our top five reasons that you might be feeling pain at the top of your feet.
Do you have private health insurance? With a large number of private health funds having a deadline of December 31st 2020 for their customers to use the podiatry services that they pay a premium for, you now have just three months to take advantage of these benefits. This includes claiming your orthotics rebate on a new or second pair of custom foot orthotics so you can get them with just a low gap*.
Do itchy feet keep you awake at night?
The medical term for itchy feet is pruritus, and this regular or recurrent itch can feel extremely frustrating for those affected. While the science behind why we itch in the first place isn’t well understood, it is thought to be a way to protect the skin from parasites, dead skin build-ups, and any other nasties that are wanting to move through the skin and invade our bodies where they can do real harm. Which makes sense! When a mozzie or other bug starts biting, you feel an itch, look down, see the bug there and shoo it away before it does too much harm. It also explains why when you see someone else itching, you may itch too – to help prevent whatever is biting or irritating the other person to get to you too.
While this is great protection, it doesn’t make the sensation any less unpleasant and downright maddening at times. If you’ve found yourself regularly itching your feet or your toes and have no idea why, our podiatry team have put together the top six reasons that your soles, toes or feet, in general, are itchy – and what you can do to help stop the itch.
Dry skin is irritated skin. If the natural oils on your feet dry up or stop doing their job to moisturise and care for the skin, the skin gets irritated, starts getting that dry and flaky appearance, and starts to itch.
The solution is to fix the dryness. This is easiest done by giving the feet a good wash and scrub to remove the dry, dead skin and applying a good moisturising lotion daily to replace the function of the natural oils. If your feet are covered in callus or hard cracks, we can take care of all of this for you at a skin & nail care appointment.
Medically known as tinea pedis, Athlete’s Foot is a common skin infection that tends to affect the soles of the feet and between the toes. It can make the skin look dry and powdery, have bubbles that look like they’re peeling and may look red and irritated. These changes to the skin, as well as the presence of the fungus, can cause the skin to get very itchy.
The solution is to use an anti-fungal medication to treat the fungus, and help prevent the fungus from returning by helping keep your feet dry as much as possible, like proactively drying your feet well after showers – especially between the toes. This is because fungus grows best in moist, warm environments – like damp socks and shoes.
Learn more about Athlete’s foot here.
Much like experiencing burning, tingling, pins and needles, nerve damage can also cause other abnormal sensations which can include itching. When it comes to the feet, diabetes is a large cause of nerve damage that we work with, while other causes of a neuropathic itch reported in studies include shingles and neural lesions, among others.
The solution: unfortunately, these itches are tricky to treat and manage as the nerve damage is often irreversible. Some medications have been reported to help, so seeing your GP or your My FootDr Podiatrist for a definitive assessment is your first step.
Chilblains develop when the blood vessels in your feet change from being constricted (narrowed) due to the cold temperatures, to dilating quickly when they warm up and sending blood streaming through the vessels. The result is that blood can leak into the surrounding tissues, and may become very itchy very quickly. You must be super careful, as your skin can be more vulnerable to damage when you have chilblains, making scratching particularly damaging
The solution is prevention. Chilblains are preventable by avoiding going from cold to hot too quickly. Instead of jumping straight into a hot shower or bath with freezing feet, let them defrost and adjust to room temperature first, wear some socks to help them warm up gradually, and avoid applying direct heat in the form of a heat pack or putting your feet up next to an open flame.
Both medical conditions and medications can also cause itchy feet. When it comes to medications, common ones you may already be taking include aspirin, some pain killers (opioids) and some blood pressure medication can get the skin itching.
When it comes to medical conditions, this can range from kidney, liver or blood problems, to having an overactive thyroid, to skin conditions like chickenpox, psoriasis, eczema, hand-foot-and-mouth disease and more.
The solution lies in addressing the cause – whether that’s managing the condition, or altering your medication with your GP to help avoid this symptom.
If your skin appears to have a reddened, rash-like appearance that may have some blistering and has some significant itching, then it may be an allergic reaction or contact with an irritant that may have triggered contact dermatitis. Contact dermatitis simply means inflammation and irritation of the skin (dermis), and can present on the feet unexpectedly as a result of glues or chemicals found in shoes, contact with irritants found in nature when walking with bare feet, or even skin and nail care products.
The solution is to identify and remove the allergen or irritant that has triggered the problem, and hence the itching. In the meantime, the itching sensation can be relieved using creams and corticosteroids from your chemist or GP.
While scratching your feet when they itch is the normal – and often uncontrollable – response to give you some much-needed temporary relief, it can also make the problem worse by irritating or even damaging your skin, leaving you with some discomfort or being vulnerable to infection. So as much as possible, try to avoid itching!
For your interest, scratching can feel so good because it sends a low-level pain signal to your brain that overrides the itching sensation, providing relief. Unfortunately, it can also trigger a cycle that re-activates the itch signal, leaving you in a constant state of itching and scratching.
If you’re worried about your feet, we’re here to help. My FootDr has clinics all around Australia with knowledgeable, experienced podiatrists to help you get the best results for your feet. Book your appointment online or call us on 1800 FOOT DR
If you hold a DVA gold card, you may be eligible for a number of fully subsidised podiatry services – and it all starts with a foot health assessment. If you’ve yet to take advantage of this service – or you have no idea how podiatry can help you, we’ve outlined everything you need to know about your foot health and My FootDr below.
It’s Australian Tradies National Health Month and to help support tradie health and encourage a healthy workplace through injury prevention management, our podiatrists are talking about your work boots!
The shoes you wear every day become the ground you walk on and can influence your risk of injury and pain. We’ve put together this safety boot fitting guide to help you use your work boots to not only protect your feet from hazards – but also keep you moving well and feeling great on your feet.
Tradies – you feel exhausted at the end of your workday, and we get it. Many of you spend a large portion of your day on your feet, moving around, climbing stairs or ladders, operating machinery and generally tiring your body.
Every step you take can result in significant forces passing through your feet and legs – like a load of up to three times your body weight on your knees. So, it’s no surprise that there are approximately 190 serious workers’ compensation claims made every day – an incidence rate of three times higher than any other occupation.
Here at My FootDr, we have the privilege of helping men and women with a wide range of lower limb problems. This gives us a unique insight into the kinds of injuries men and women tend to sustain more frequently, and the causes behind them. We believe that knowledge is power – and that knowing your risks is a powerful tool to help avoid painful and potentially long-standing injuries. So today, we thought we’d pair our observations with the current research to help answer an all-too-common question: who is more prone to injury, men or women – and why?
Recently, we treated a social runner in his 50’s who was experiencing pain and swelling behind his knee. He couldn’t recall any injury or reason for the pain, but it seemed to be getting worse, especially when he bent or straightened his knee. With a careful examination, history taking, medical imaging and consultation with his GP, he was diagnosed with a Baker’s cyst – and we quickly set to work on helping him feel more comfortable.
Of all the causes of pain around the knee, a Baker’s cyst is one that isn’t talked about very often. Given that it has a growing relationship with knee problems including lesions, meniscus tears and early osteoarthritis, we thought we’d fill you in on Baker’s cysts, how to tell if one may be the cause of your knee pain, and what you can do if that pain and tightness starts behind your knee.
A Baker’s cyst, also known as a popliteal cyst, is a swollen bursa at the back of the knee. We have bursae all around our body – they are fluid-filled and cushion-like sacs that sit between bone and tissue. By allowing tissues like tendons to glide smoothly over the bursa instead of rubbing against the bone, bursae help to prevent painful damage.
With the knee taking on large forces during physical activities – especially those that repetitively bend and straighten the knee like running – it’s not surprising that bursae are vulnerable to damage and pain, much like many of the other structures in the knee.
When the bursa at the back of the knee is damaged, more fluid is produced, causing the bursa to swell and become inflamed and painful. The result is a noticeable swollen lump that will make it difficult and painful for you to fully straighten or bend your knee. The swollen bursa also puts pressure on the surrounding structures too, causing tenderness, stiffness and even bruising. If the bursa pushes on a nerve, you may start feeling numbness, tingling, pins and needles and other nerve-related sensations.
The cause of the problem may be related to a knee injury, a condition like arthritis, or it may be unclear. When it comes to running, going for long distances when your lower limb biomechanics are less than ideal and hence are putting excess pressure through the knee joint can also irritate the tissues and structures around the knee
Regardless of the cause, it’s likely that you won’t notice it until it gets swollen enough to bulge and affect your movement, which may occur some time after the original cause of the problem. While Baker’s cysts aren’t necessarily dangerous and may resolve on their own over time, there’s also a risk that they may burst and cause further problems. In the meantime, they’ll restrict your movement and can make it difficult for you to do physical activities and perform everyday tasks.
Treating a Baker’s cyst starts with making sure you have the right diagnosis – which is where your My FootDr podiatry team comes in. After we’re confirmed your cyst and ruled out other causes of pain behind the knee, the goal is to help you feel as comfortable as possible by reducing the swelling in the bursa. Using ice intermittently, elevating your leg, resting and taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatories can help.
Depending on the response and severity of the cyst, we may need to refer you to help drain the fluid or seek further testing. Next, we’ll address any excess pressure on your knee joints and try to minimise and manage this as much as possible. Your footwear, foot posture and foot biomechanics can all add excess pressure on your knee – and are factors we can help you with by recommending the right footwear for your feet and pairing these with custom foot orthotics. Tight or weak muscles may also place unbalanced and troublesome forces on the knee – so it’s important to assess this in your exam too.
Here at My FootDr, we’re big believers that pain does not happen for no reason. Whether you’re a runner or not, pain is our body’s way of letting us know that something is wrong – and we need to listen to it before the problem worsens.
Our team of experienced podiatrists have been helping Australia care for their foot and leg health for over 25x years. Book your appointment online by clicking here or call us on 1800 FOOTDR