Ultimate Prescription

Headaches

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Nick Evenson (Host), Dr. James Marcum

Home

Series Code: UP

Program Code: UP000082A


00:01 The following program presents principles
00:02 designed to promote good health
00:04 and is not intended to take the place
00:05 of personalized professional care.
00:07 The opinions and ideas expressed
00:09 are those of the speaker.
00:10 Viewers are encouraged to draw their own conclusions
00:13 about the information presented.
00:17 Have you ever considered the relationship
00:18 between your feet and your health?
00:21 The feet are the foundation of the human body
00:23 and play a crucial role in our overall health.
00:25 Stay tuned and learn
00:27 why those feet are so important.
00:30 I'm Dr. James Marcum.
00:32 Are you interested in discovering the reason
00:34 why you want solutions to your healthcare problem?
00:38 Are you tired of taking medications?
00:41 Well, you're about to be given the Ultimate Prescription.
00:46 You know, foot pain is no laughing matter,
00:49 the human foot has 26 bones, 33 joints,
00:53 107 ligaments and 19 muscles and tendons.
00:57 And the 52 bones in your feet
00:59 make up about 25% of the overall bones
01:01 in your body.
01:03 So there's a lot to take care of in your foot.
01:05 If something's causing you pain in your foot,
01:07 it's worth looking into.
01:09 Welcome to the Ultimate Prescription,
01:11 I'm your host Nick Evinson, here with Dr. James Marcum,
01:14 and Dr. Marcum, how important
01:15 is care for your feet in foot care?
01:18 Very important, Nick,
01:19 and if you think of what we've been talking
01:21 about this series,
01:22 we've been talking about pain in various parts of our body.
01:25 That's right.
01:26 And feet are definitely a part that has pain
01:30 and when you think about pain in your foot,
01:32 if your foot aren't happy, nothing's happy, you know,
01:35 you can't walk, you can't do things,
01:37 you can't exercise, you can't move,
01:39 you don't sleep well at night,
01:40 it hurts every time you put your shoe on,
01:43 it's a big problem.
01:45 So the doctors that take care of feet
01:47 are called podiatrist, they're experts in this.
01:50 That's right, yeah.
01:51 You know, we recently visited our friend Dr. Cheryl Haag,
01:53 at the Foot and Ankle Center
01:55 and she had some very interesting things
01:57 to share about common causes of foot pain,
02:00 let's take a look at the video now.
02:02 Some of the most common things that we see,
02:04 probably number one is heel pain
02:07 or plantar fasciitis associated with heel's burst.
02:11 We also see bunions, hammer toes,
02:15 lot of ingrown toe nails, fractures, diabetic problems.
02:21 Usually when people show up, they're hurting,
02:24 on a scale of zero to ten, if zero is no pain,
02:27 ten is the worst.
02:28 They're usually eight to ten
02:29 by the time they show up on our door step.
02:31 When a patient comes with pain,
02:33 we take a good history obviously,
02:34 wanna know if there's any injury
02:36 or something that is...
02:38 Some event that's contributing to the problem,
02:41 examine their foot, take x-rays, if it's...
02:45 We think there is a soft issue involved,
02:49 we have ultra sound here in the office,
02:51 so that we can...
02:52 X- rays locate bone,
02:53 ultra sound looks at soft issue.
02:56 If it's a problem of the way they're walking,
02:59 we watch them walk, we can evaluate that also.
03:04 People always ask me, what causes this pain?
03:06 If it's not associated with an injury,
03:09 why did I get this pain?
03:11 And you know, we can put a certain amount to hereditary,
03:16 may be just 10% or so but really it's shoes.
03:19 The type of shoe that you wear
03:21 or you do not wear,
03:23 that contributes a lot for all the thousands of steps
03:26 that you take in a day.
03:27 One of the major contributing causes of heel pain
03:31 is the lack of support.
03:33 Stress and strain on the arch of the foot
03:35 gives you heel pain,
03:36 and the most common cause of that
03:38 is wearing flip-flops, sandals, bare feet,
03:41 just shoes that do not have good support.
03:44 I'm just gonna show you
03:46 what I mean by supporting your shoe.
03:48 A shoe, when you're gonna buy,
03:49 it should never be able to bend in half, okay
03:53 there is poor support,
03:54 it should have a good counter in the back,
03:56 it should never flatten down
03:58 and a little bit of fabric and leather,
04:02 but again if you want to have good support,
04:04 you put in orthotic.
04:05 An orthotic is a custom type of arch support
04:08 that goes into the shoe that gives you support,
04:10 so that if you do have arch collapse
04:13 or problems with your arch,
04:15 that makes any shoe give the proper support.
04:18 If it's a problem of heel pain
04:20 which is the most common thing we see,
04:24 obviously we want them to rest, we want to put straps
04:27 or we want to give them arch supports,
04:29 we wanna put them in a better support of shoe
04:32 or a sneaker,
04:34 we want to give them anti-inflammatory
04:36 whether it's by mouth topically
04:38 or cortisone injections, we want to do stretching,
04:42 a lot of times it's just caused by tight tendons,
04:45 there's physical therapy, so there are several modalities
04:50 that we can do for that.
04:52 Everybody thinks, "Oh, you're gonna do surgery."
04:54 No, we're not gonna do surgery on them, okay.
04:57 That's the last thing,
04:58 the least that we wanna think about.
05:00 Probably eight out of ten people
05:02 live happily ever after with heel pain,
05:04 we can get them better,
05:06 may be about 20% that we would have to take on
05:08 where heel pain, if it's removing a heel spur,
05:11 if it's lengthening the plantar fascia,
05:14 taking care of that problem.
05:16 So we try everything,
05:17 a non-surgical conservative approach first.
05:20 Your feet are the foundation of your body,
05:24 they house 25% of your bones, your ligaments and vessels
05:30 and it's so important.
05:33 Again a building is built on a firm foundation,
05:36 it's very, very important that you take care of that
05:38 and prevention is the main thing.
05:43 And we like to thank Dr. Haag for sharing her expertise
05:45 and her time with us.
05:47 And, Dr. Marcum, it sounds like
05:48 there's a lot of different things
05:49 that can cause pain in the feet.
05:51 Yeah, feet pain is foot pain, feet pain,
05:53 whatever you wanna call, it is not a fun thing to have.
05:56 Yeah.
05:57 You know, I've thought a lot about this and, you know,
05:59 I have problem with my feet quite a bit and you say,
06:02 "What causes foot pain?
06:04 you know, what causes...
06:06 When we know about the trauma, like,
06:07 you sprain your ankle or you stub your toe,
06:10 of course, that's gonna cause foot pain
06:12 but most of the foot pain we now
06:14 are coming from chronic problems.
06:17 And, you know, we're just weren't made to wear
06:19 all these tight shoes, and, you know,
06:21 high heel shoes and constrain our feet
06:25 and also, we're not exercising our feet
06:28 like we used to, to keep the muscle strong
06:31 and to keep the support system lasting
06:33 for a long period of time.
06:34 Right.
06:36 So you add that up
06:37 and then soon or later, guess what?
06:38 The part start to wear off,
06:40 how many bones you said, 52 bones?
06:41 Yeah, 52 bones in your feet.
06:43 Yeah, that's a lot of bones and ligaments
06:45 and tendons and muscles and there is a lot,
06:47 a lot of people don't realize
06:48 but, you know, also the blood supply
06:50 to the foot is very important too.
06:52 Right.
06:53 And just have the vascular disease,
06:55 you know, we've talked about
06:57 how prominent vascular diseases in the heart,
06:59 we've talked about in the brain,
07:01 you get dementia, well, you can vascular disease
07:03 in the blood vessels of the feet too
07:05 and if the bones and the ligaments
07:06 and the muscles don't get enough blood,
07:08 guess what happens?
07:09 Pain develops. Right, yeah.
07:12 I mean, another thing is when we sit a lot, you know,
07:14 that puts more, you know,
07:16 sort of an unnatural thing for our feet,
07:18 so that's another thing that causes foot pain
07:20 and you add it all up and soon or later,
07:22 our feet start to hurt.
07:24 Right. Do you have foot pain?
07:25 I sure have. Yeah, it's not fun, is it?
07:28 No, I had an ingrown toe nail
07:29 and I had to go and actually see Dr. Haag
07:32 and she took care of it,
07:33 and I definitely waited longer than I should have
07:36 before I went and saw her.
07:37 Yeah, that means many people out there that have foot pain
07:39 and I'm gonna talk about some of the common causes,
07:41 I mean, you know, you hear these big names,
07:43 so we're gonna throw out some big names.
07:45 Okay.
07:46 Tell you what it is,
07:48 most of the time when you have...
07:49 Some of these conditions, you do have to see a podiatrist
07:51 which is a foot doctor specialist.
07:54 One of things that we see, like she mentioned is,
07:56 plantar fasciitis.
07:58 Right.
07:59 And that's where the fascia gets inflamed,
08:01 it hurts a lot and that could be as simple as,
08:04 because we don't have support on our ankles.
08:09 You know, it doesn't have a good blood supply,
08:11 so it takes a long time to heal that type of inflammation.
08:15 So people that have that, they have to,
08:17 sometimes they put their feet in boots to rest it,
08:21 sometimes they had to take short courses
08:23 of anti-inflammatory medications,
08:26 sometimes they had to get support on their ankle
08:30 and you saw the foot supports.
08:33 Now there are doctors now, Nick,
08:35 they can actually make mouldings of your feet, okay.
08:38 We have the technology now that's exactly
08:40 what type of foot support you need
08:42 to sort of avoid those problems.
08:44 Yeah, custom orthotic.
08:45 Custom orthotic, that's a very common cause of foot pain,
08:48 that's the fashion gets in.
08:49 Now another thing that happens is the tendons,
08:52 the tendons can get inflamed.
08:54 Okay.
08:55 And we call that tendonitis, you know,
08:56 just moving the tendon a lot, sometimes we see that
09:00 people that work at the gym a lot,
09:01 they might be going and doing lot of treadmill work,
09:04 repetitive work,
09:05 where the tendons have to work over and over,
09:07 a lot of runners, sometimes get tendonitis
09:10 where the tendons get inflamed,
09:12 that's a very painful condition,
09:14 of course, the best treatment is to rest,
09:17 if rest doesn't work
09:18 then they can take short courses
09:19 of anti-inflammatory,
09:21 if it's getting in the severe cases,
09:22 they inject steroids into that area,
09:24 'cause steroids help cut down the inflammation.
09:27 Now, of course,
09:29 one of the largest causes of foot problems
09:31 is just trauma to the foot.
09:33 You know, the foot just...
09:34 Sprained ankles and that kind of thing?
09:35 Yeah, it gets hurt, you know, you're running, it gets hurt,
09:38 those type of problems.
09:39 Right.
09:40 If you think about the structures in the foot,
09:42 we've talked about the blood vessels,
09:43 there's also nerves in the feet and if nerves get damaged
09:47 on repetitive use,
09:49 sometimes things in the foot get squished,
09:52 you've heard of things like neuromas, okay,
09:55 those are nerve tissues, diabetes is a condition
09:59 that damages the nerves of the feet as well.
10:01 Usually, they have a lot of burning on the sides
10:04 of the foot when you have, you know, nerve problems.
10:06 Okay.
10:08 A lot of people have cheilosis on their feet,
10:10 because if things not rubbing well,
10:12 you get a foot that's too dry, that's a problem, then,
10:15 you know, socks rub on it,
10:17 here's a medical delusion gout,
10:19 that's typically when at the base of the big toe,
10:22 you get uric acid crystals,
10:24 the uric acid crystals deposit there,
10:27 create a lot of pain as well
10:28 and one of the most common places
10:30 is the base of the big toe, we call that gout.
10:33 Have you heard of bunions? Yeah.
10:35 Okay, bunions are on the side, you get these grows
10:38 on the side of your foot
10:39 because the toes are in that position,
10:42 this area 'cause constant rubbing,
10:46 it can get big and it can hurt quite a bit and of course,
10:49 that sometimes you have a bunionectomy,
10:51 that's where they surgically cut that bunion off.
10:53 You've talked about the ingrown toe nail,
10:55 that's a pretty common thing for people to have
10:57 and that can happen
10:59 just because people don't cut their toes very well.
11:01 Yeah, the toe nails, right. Yeah.
11:02 Yeah.
11:04 A lot of people have sweaty feet
11:05 and they can't keep the sweat out of the feet,
11:07 so fungus and different types like that
11:09 can grow inside the toe nails
11:11 and get a fungal toe nail infections.
11:14 So there's lots of different problems
11:16 that can happen to the feet that could be secretory
11:19 but I think the big, the big picture we want,
11:21 if you have foot pain that won't go away,
11:24 see your doctor and concentrate on, you know,
11:27 we talked to Dr. Haag about how to pick a good shoe?
11:31 And we're gonna go over that
11:32 a little bit more in greater detail
11:35 but feet are so important and you've gotta use your feet,
11:38 you've gotta exercise them
11:39 but you've gotta keep your whole body healthy,
11:41 that will also help keep your foot healthy.
11:43 That's right, we don't want you to be stubborn like I was
11:45 before I went to see Dr. Haag.
11:47 We've got more on foot pain coming up in just a moment,
11:49 so stay with us and Dr. Marcum is gonna help us learn
11:52 a lot about caring for those feet.


Home

Revised 2016-11-28