About Podiatry

Your big toe is the hardest-working toe. Every time your foot pushes off the ground, this toe supports most of your body’s weight. Because the big toe is so critical to movement, any problem with it can make walking or even standing painful. A bunion (excess or misaligned bone in the joint) is one of the most common big toe problems. In addition to causing pain, a bunion changes the shape of your foot, making it harder to find shoes that fit.

But you don’t have to hobble for the rest of your life. Bunions can be treated. With your doctor’s help, you feet can feel and look better.

Corns and calluses are your body’s response to friction or pressure against the skin. If your foot rubs inside your shoe, the affected area of skin thickens. Or if a bone is not in the normal position, skin caught between bone and shoe or bone and ground builds up. In either case, the outer layer of skin thickens to protect the foot from unusual pressure.

In many cases, corns and calluses look bad but are not harmful. However, more severe corns and calluses may become infected, destroy healthy tissue or affect foot movement. But with your doctor’s help, corns and calluses can be controlled.

Your little toes help to balance and propel your body when you move. As you foot flattens, the little toes bend to grip the ground. Then they straighten, acting like levers to help push your foot so you can walk, run or dance. But if the front of your foot is wide, you may develop a problem known as hammer toe. Hammer toes are little toes that buckle or curl under.

Over time, these toes may hurt and make movement more difficult. But you don’t have to live with pain. With you doctor’s help, even severe hammer toes can usually be treated so you can move more easily.

Committed to the health of your feet, podiatric medicine focuses on diagnosing, treating and preventing foot and ankle problems, such as neuromas. Commonly called a Morton’s neuroma, this problem begins when the outer coating of a nerve in your foot thickens. This thickening is usually caused by irritation that results when two bones repeatedly rub together (often due to ill-fitting shoes or abnormal bone movement.) Nerve problems due to diabetes or alcoholism may also cause neuroma-like symptoms.

Podiatric medicine focuses on diagnosing, treating and preventing foot and ankle problems, such as plantar fasciitis. The plantar fascia is a ligament-like band running from your heel to the ball of your foot. This band pulls on the heel bone, raising the arch of your foot as it pushes off the ground. But if your foot moves incorrectly, the plantar fascia may become strained. The fascia may sweat and its tiny fibers may begin to fray, causing plantar fasclitis.

A wart is an infection caused by a virus, which can invade your skin through small cuts or breaks. Over time, the wart develops into a hard, rough growth on the surface of the skin. A wart is most commonly seen on the bottom of the foot (plantar wart), but can also appear on the top, Children, teens and people with allergies or weakened immune systems are more vulnerable to the wart virus.