Cold therapy
The painful areas on the foot can also be treated with ice packs, cold spray or cryopacks. Cooling and analgesic ointments can also be applied to the heel spur and help to alleviate the pain. Cold can also slow down or even stop inflammatory processes. After the cold treatment the blood circulation is stimulated. This promotes the removal of inflammatory cells and thus promotes the healing process.
Injection Therapy
When treating a calcaneal spur, infiltration of the affected area with a local anesthetic or cortisone can also be considered. Especially for very active athletes this offers a short term and fast improvement of the symptoms in order to stay active. The local anesthetic relieves the pain and prevents the pain from being transmitted via the nerve endings located there. Cortisone is a substance produced naturally in the body that is particularly suitable for treating inflammation. It inhibits inflammatory processes and at the same time prevents them from spreading to neighboring healthy tissue.
Treadmill analysis
Whoever has caused a heel spur by jogging will suffer a heel spur again by jogging without changing the causative factors, as soon as the disease has healed because the causes have not been eliminated. Therefore an optimal adjustment of running shoe and running technique, as well as turning off all risk factors such as knee-lower-plate-feet, must take place. Such adjustments are made by means of a treadmill analysis.
Course of disease and prognosis
Once a heel spur has formed, it does not spontaneously regress on its own. Many people do not even notice that they have a new bone formation in the heel area because the calcaneal spur does not always cause symptoms. If measures such as pain-relieving medication, cryotherapy, shoe insoles and stretching exercises show no improvement, surgery will ultimately be necessary.
The heel spur is removed and the patient is free of symptoms shortly after the operation. For people who are very active in sports, such an operation is probably much more likely to be performed because the constant strain on the heel, as is the case when jogging, accelerates the inflammation and causes complaints much earlier. In order for them to be able to continue their sporting activities without pain, it would therefore be advisable to remove the new bone formation as early as possible so that the tendons on the foot are not further damaged.
