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 femoral neck stress fractures. However, I can tell you what I would do if I had a femoral neck stress fr...
May 17, 2021•4 min•Ep. 405
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 Doc On The Run Podcast, we're talking about the three types of runners who get the most from telemedici...
May 14, 2021•6 min•Ep. 404
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 running stairs. He wanted to know... Which is worse for my Achilles tendon, running hills or running stair...
May 12, 2021•6 min•Ep. 403
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 want to get "wonky." Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast, we're talking about why wonky is better than...
May 10, 2021•5 min•Ep. 402
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 happened with this runner when I did his second opinion consultation. Today on the Doc On The Run podcast...
May 07, 2021•5 min•Ep. 401
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 during the last year. I work at a standing desk, I record podcasts at a standing desk, I do Zoom calls w...
May 05, 2021•5 min•Ep. 400
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 and you would think that it's pretty simple. In this particular case, the doctor looked at his x-ra...
May 03, 2021•7 min•Ep. 399
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 not that treatment is actually appropriate given your circumstances. There is nothing risk-free in med...
Apr 30, 2021•5 min•Ep. 398
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 you just have shin splints, if you've done a telemedicine consultation with an expert on running injur...
Apr 28, 2021•4 min•Ep. 397
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 pain journal. During this one hour second opinion call, we figured out that she had been misdiagnosed. W...
Apr 26, 2021•6 min•Ep. 396
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 asked an interesting question, and I remembered that I actually created a check-list years ago for run...
Apr 23, 2021•5 min•Ep. 395
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 doctor explained to her that she might want to get some kind of plate to put in her shoe to make it stif...
Apr 21, 2021•6 min•Ep. 394
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. Now, everybody wants some timeline, like two weeks, four weeks, six weeks, something that says this is how...
Apr 19, 2021•4 min•Ep. 393
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 plantar fasciitis is not really self-limiting. It does not miraculously go away like a cold virus. It h...
Apr 16, 2021•4 min•Ep. 392
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 enough that you're not going to make it worse by running. I get this same question for people with Achil...
Apr 13, 2021•6 min•Ep. 391
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 an MRI is performed in the hopes of getting a clear picture of the plantar plate damage. Sometimes ...
Apr 12, 2021•7 min•Ep. 389
Is there any proof that you don't have to stop running when you get a metatarsal stress response in your foot? A lot of doctors and patients are really confused about the differences between a stress fracture and a stress reaction and a stress response in runners. A stress response is a normal physiologic response when you stress any tissue as a component of training. The goal of your running workout is to stress the tissue, get it, to react, and rebuild in a way that makes it stronger. Today on...
Apr 09, 2021•8 min•Ep. 388
When a runner gets an overtraining injury and goes to a doctor, the doctor’s only priority is healing the injured tissue. Most runners also think healing the injured tissue is the highest priority. Healing is not really a problem. All tissue will heal eventually, if you reduce the stress and strain enough to allow healing. The problem is healing an overtraining injury can take weeks or months. If you stop running and stop training for weeks or months, you’ll never get back to running at the same...
Apr 07, 2021•6 min•Ep. 387
I just got off a telemedicine call with a runner who wanted to know why she sometimes feel popping and clicking in the ball of the foot after she runs. She saw a doctor and was diagnosed with a Morton's neuroma. The doctor gave her some metatarsal pads, which made the neuroma feel better. But she could not figure out why she seemed to only get this weird popping and clicking sensation after she went for long runs and hill repeats. Today on the Doc On The Run podcast we're talking about why a neu...
Apr 06, 2021•6 min•Ep. 386
One of my favorite podcasts is called The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. I recently sat down with Jill Angie, who hosts that show. Self-criticism heals no wounds! When you have an injury, and you have been training hard, it is very easy to beat yourself up. Jill is the best person to explain how we can take an injury and reframe it so we don’t beat ourselves up when we are injured. Today on the Doc On The Run podcast we're talking about how self-confidence and self-love beat finish times, ever...
Apr 02, 2021•51 min•Ep. 385
I get questions all the time on social media from people who want to know if they can run, and at the base of their question is really, how long does it take for some particular injury to heal? There's actually a wide variety of timelines on how long it takes for all of different injuries to different types of tissues to heal, even depending upon anatomic location. Your age plays into the timeline for healing running injuries Today on the Doc On The Run podcast we're talking about how long tissu...
Mar 31, 2021•9 min•Ep. 384
This episode comes from a question sent in by an injured runner who was listening to the Doc On The Run Podcast. "I am 30 with medium arches. No prior injuries. 7 months ago I began having left med ankle pain at the calcaneal insertion. MRI confirmed a plantar fascia rupture of med cord. I was told to just ice and stretch. I have a distal 4th fracture on the right. Both feet at once?! What should I do? It hurts!” Today on the Doc On The Run podcast we're talking about what a runner should do whe...
Mar 29, 2021•12 min•Ep. 383
This episode comes from a question from one of the Doc On The Run YouTube channel viewers who wanted to know about “bilateral bipartite sesamoid bones” and what that really means. I get these kind of questions all the time, when somebody really wants to know what a term means, and what the implications are for them as a runner. Usually the runner is trying to figure out how to keep running while the sesamoid heals. Sometimes the concern is a sesamoid stress fracture or a condition like sesamoidi...
Mar 26, 2021•9 min•Ep. 382
This episode comes from a question from a runner, who wanted to know what it means when calf muscles are tight and you have metatarsal stress fractures. He wrote in and said, "Hey doc, I meant to inquire about stress fractures in the metatarsal joints and how you can tell. I have a friend who's experienced a stress fracture, and he says his calves seemed to tighten up when the pain developed." There are really two ways tight calf muscles can be related to metatarsal stress fractures. One is the ...
Mar 24, 2021•7 min•Ep. 381
I was just doing telemedicine visit with a runner who has a red, painful big toe joint. Gout is an accumulation of painful sharp crystals in the joint. Gout certainly can cause your big toe joint to become red, hot, swollen and painful. But gout is only one of three different conditions that might cause big toe joint pain. The pattern of redness around the big toe joint can help you decide which condition might be causing the problem if you are a runner. Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast, we'r...
Mar 22, 2021•9 min•Ep. 380
The other day I was doing a telemedicine visit with a trail runner who asked me, "Which is better, soft or hard trail running shoes?" If you're thinking about getting some new trail running shoes, you have to really think about what's going to be best for you. When comes to how stiff or how soft the shoes should be depends upon three variables: Your foot type. How hard or soft is the trail. How steep is the trail. If you keep these 3 variable in mind the you go to your local running shoe store, ...
Mar 19, 2021•8 min•Ep. 379
A runner with pain under the big toe joint said she was told she had a problem with the sesamoid bones in her foot. The doctor said maybe it was sesamoiditis, or a sesamoid stress reaction or possibly even a sesamoid stress fracture. Her question was, “What exactly are the sesamoid bones in the foot?” Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast, we're talking about these weird little things called the sesamoid bones in the foot.
Mar 17, 2021•5 min•Ep. 378
A plantar plate ligament sprain can cause aching pain in the ball of the foot when you run. Plantar plate sprains are caused by excess stress applied to the ligament at the base of the toe. If you want to heal it and keep running, you have to decrease the stress and strain on the plantar plate, and address the root cause of the injury. A runner with a plantar plate sprain, and tight calf muscles, had a great question: Does the plantar plate ligament cause tight calf muscles, or can a tight calf ...
Mar 15, 2021•8 min•Ep. 377
Shin splints and tibial stress fractures can feel similar when you run. Most runners understand there is a huge difference between shin splints and a tibial stress fractures. I recently did a telemedicine second opinion call with a runner who had a tibial stress fracture. What she did not understand, and what her doctor had not explained is why some tibial stress fractures are very low risk of breaking, and another is very high risk of landing a runner in the operating room. Today on the Doc On ...
Mar 12, 2021•7 min•Ep. 376
I was just doing a telemedicine call with a runner with a stress fracture, and he had a really interesting question. He said, "Look, I just really want to know if I really have a stress fracture because my doctor took an x-ray and there was no crack in the bone. I looked it up myself and the definition of a fracture is a visible crack." Do I really have a stress fracture, or not? This is a great question, it brings up a really interesting point. Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast, we're talking...
Mar 10, 2021•7 min•Ep. 375
