HEEL PAIN
Heels can land you in trouble when a pain develops here. It is the calcaneum bone that is the mystery. However, chiropractors study how the weight-bearing action of the foot has changed as a result of an injury to create the problem in the heel.
It is nearly always a sacro-iliac joint sprain located in the pelvis. Spurs develop in the heel because of uneven pressure. However local joint adhesions from old sprains can be a cause of pain here too.
A man limped into my practice, complaining of a pain in his heel ‘underneath’ where his weight came down on it. He had been bushwalking the previous weekend and all was well till two days later when the pain became more than he was willing to suffer. His wife had already massaged it with liniment to no avail, and he had soaked it in a foot bath. Nothing seemed helpful so here he was. It was clear from a few tests that the sacro-iliac joint in his pelvis was the cause. He was walking with an apparent ‘short leg’ condition and weight bearing on the ankle was uneven. This is often the case.
We can use a direct chiropractic adjustment with no clicking sounds to manipulate this joint. The patient described above walked out in a different but corrected position – much happier than when he walked in. A couple of days of walking evenly took care of the pain.
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