Turf Toe

You may have heard the phrase before, but what exactly is “turf toe”?

Turf toe refers loosely to a collection of problems that may occur at the big toe. The joint that connects the big toe to the rest of the foot lies between the first metatarsal and the proximal phalange of the big toe. This joint, known commonly as the first metatarsophalangeal (MTP) joint, has two small bones that lie underneath it. These sesamoid bones act as pulleys, allowing the muscles of the foot to have a great pull on the big toe during weight bearing activities.

When something goes wrong with this apparatus, particularly during sports such as soccer and football, the injury may be referred to as turf toe.

Due to the propulsive and pivoting function of the big toe during weight-bearing activities, it is susceptible to injury.

Most commonly, the injury involves an excessive amount of dorsiflexion, or upward motion, of the big toe. This type of injury will lead to a sprain of the ligaments surrounding the joint. This is common in sports where the athlete is wearing cleats, because the cleats cause the foot to maintain a certain position while the body weight is shifting forward. Synthetic turf can create an ideal situation for this type of injury to occur, because the cleats usually stick to the turf easier, and the ground underneath the turf is generally a harder surface.

Since turf toe is a general term, it may also refer to conditions such as sesamoiditis, which is inflammation of the tissue surrounding the sesamoid bones. The sesamoid bones may also be fractured in this type of injury, or the joint capsule surrounding the first MTP joint may be compromised. When evaluating a turf toe injury, the medical professional will work to rule out more serious diagnoses. Turf toe injuries are most frequently handled by a podiatrist, orthopedist, physiatrist, or sports medicine doctor.

Treatment of turf toe, if there are no fractures or other more serious complications, is generally done by resting the foot, icing the area, taking anti-inflammatory medications, and immobilizing the toe. Usually the goal of the treatment is to allow the athlete to return to activity without further complication, and without re-aggravating the injury.

Turf toe is usually a pretty straight-forward injury, and athletes are often able to return to activity in a relatively short amount of time. It is however an injury with a high rate of reoccurrence. Roughly half of the patients that suffer from turf toe will have a reoccurrence within five years of treatment.

Central Florida Foot and Ankle Center, LLC.
101 6TH St. NW.
Winter Haven, Fl. 33881
863-299-4551
http://www.FLFootandAnkle.com

Low Impact Exercise

What exactly is low impact exercise? Low impact exercise is determined by the shock that your feet and body experience while doing an activity. Heavy duty sports such as rugby or football are high impact, high intensity exercises. You are literally sending shockwaves through every bone in your body with those types of activities. However, just because an activity is deemed low-impact, does not mean that you cannot burn calories or lose weight through it.

There are some instances and body types where low-impact activities are encouraged as the preferred means of exercise.

- Obese individuals

- Pregnant women

- Individuals with bone or joint injuries (low impact exercise is great for rehabilitation)

- Individuals with chronic health problems like stress fractures , arthritis and osteoporosis

- Individuals new to exercise

If you think that that low impact exercises cannot cause some serious calorie burning, think again. There are so many low impact activities that will require substantial energy to get through: walking, walking up stairs, hiking, cycling, rowing and swimming.

Low impact exercises should be done continuously so that your heart rate gradually increases and stays at a high level. Studies have also shown that 30 minutes of low impact exercising raises your endorphin levels! (Endorphins are pain-reducing compounds within the body) Another plus to losing those calories! Although these exercises are not as intense as sporting activities it is important to start slow and build your way up. These activities can become strenuous and intense if you work hard at them.

Cross-training with different low-impact exercises is the best way to get your body into shape without subjecting it to harsh forces. If you keep your body challenged by varying your exercises, you will burn calories, lose weight and feel good about not sitting on that couch!

How can you add variety to your exercising?

- Try grouping exercises that use different parts of your body for example swimming and stair climbing

- As you gain endurance change the pace or frequency that you do your exercises

- Embellish your exercise movements, for example when swimming take bigger and longer strokes, when marching raise your knees up higher

Before engaging in any exercise regimen, consult your podiatrist for a foot screening.

They will evaluate all aspects of your foot and associated systems such as musculoskeletal, vascular, and neurological to make sure that they all are working together properly. If you encounter any problems or sustain an injury during your workout, stop immediately and talk with your podiatrist.

Central Florida Foot and Ankle Center, LLC.
101 6TH St. NW.
Winter Haven, Fl. 33881
863-299-4551
http://www.FLFootandAnkle.com

Yao Ming Opts for Pair of Surgeries, Likely to Miss Season

On Friday, Houston Rockets’ center Yao Ming announced that he will opt for a pair of surgeries on his left foot. The news comes following an injury sustained this past playoff season, when the 7-foot 6-inch professional basketball player hobbled off the court with a broken navicular bone.

After several years of aggravating injuries, Ming will undergo a two-part procedure to fix and strengthen the bone. The first surgery will use a bone graft to help regenerate new bone and surgically repair the hairline fracture of the left navicular. The second procedure will involve realigning the bones of the left foot, thereby lowering the arch of the foot and relieving some of the pressure put on the bones. This procedure may involve attaching a plate to the bones using shallow screws. In February 2008, a similar procedure was done using pins to strengthen the area, but subsequent injuries followed.

This pair of surgeries will likely sideline Yao Ming for the entire season. The Houston Rockets, however, have not released an official statement on the timeline of Ming’s return.

“After much thought and reflection, I have decided to have surgery on my left foot,” Yao Ming said in a prepared statement on Friday. “This surgery will allow me to continue my career playing basketball, and I look forward to returning to the court. I would like to thank everyone who sent me their best wishes. I am very grateful to have the support of teammates, friends and fans as I dedicate myself to making a completely successful recovery.”

The surgery that Yao Ming will be undergoing is similar to a surgery performed on Cleveland Cavaliers center Zyndrunas Ilgauskas in 2001. Ilgauskas recovered well from the surgery, and has since made a great impact on his team and in the league, averaging 74.5 games played since 2001.

The surgery will be performed by Rockets team physician, Dr. Tom Clanton. “This combination of procedures should not only allow healing of his navicular stress fracture but also improve the mechanics of his foot to reduce the stress on that bone and give him the best long-term prognosis,” Clanton said in Friday’s statement.

This season will mark the fifth consecutive season that has been either missed, interrupted, or ended early for Yao Ming, all due to bone injuries. Rockets personnel is standing behind their All-Star center, and has requested to the NBA an exception to the disabled player list.

Others say that it’s just not meant to be – that a man that big was not meant to run up and down a basketball court.

Central Florida Foot and Ankle Center, LLC.
101 6TH St. NW.
Winter Haven, Fl. 33881
863-299-4551
http://www.FLFootandAnkle.com

Shoe-be-gone!

Despite all the roles that our feet must play to enable our mobility, to balance our body, to hold up our body weight and to absorb shock, how do we reward them? It’s usually by neglecting the well-being of our feet and confining them in a prison of shoes. We disregard valuable stretching exercises before engaging in physical activities and squish our feet into shoe wear that damages their health. The shoe wear that is being referred to is not just limited to high heels or flip flops, but athletic shoes!

Since when are athletic shoes bad? Tennis shoes themselves are not bad in their entirety – they do provide foot protection from falling objects, significantly assist in shock absorption and redistribute energies in active sporting. However, the constant use of shoes actually inhibits the natural function of feet which can lead to joint and muscle problems elsewhere in the body!

Our feet have evolved to help balance our body and keep us walking upright. The foot is composed of 28 bones which are arranged to form longitudinal and transverse arches. Muscles, tendons and ligaments all help to support the arches. When jogging or running barefoot, our feet are made to land on the ball of the foot to absorb the impact of the ground on our bodies.
Athletic shoes are constructed to cushion and cradle the foot while exercising. The padding that lines those shoes encourages the activist to land on their heels instead of the ball of the foot! As a result, the energies from ground impact traverse right through the heel. The heel is not anatomically equipped to bear such shock. In addition, the heel is in direct line with the ankles, leg, knees, thighs, hips and spine – so any impact the heel experiences distributes right to these bodily areas. Also, the cushioning in the shoes weakens the body’s awareness of foot orientation and contact with the ground which impairs the neurological and muscular feedback that maintains the biomechanics of motion.
It is also important to note that research studies have shown that the quantity of padding is directly related to the amount of impact transferred to the body from the foot. This occurs because the padding interferes with the runner’s ability to feel the ground and as a result the runner strikes their heel more forcefully to the ground leading to increased shock and its transfer to other areas of the body! So remember just because an athletic shoe claims to have the ultimate in comfort and padding, it may not actually be good for your feet!

Central Florida Foot and Ankle Center, LLC.
101 6TH St. NW.
Winter Haven, Fl. 33881
863-299-4551
http://www.FLFootandAnkle.com

Bad Ankles? Try This…

If you’ve ever sprained an ankle, you know how hard the recovery process can be. Your ankle probably swelled up to the point where you could only wear a certain pair of shoes, and simply walking on it was impossible. It may have taken four weeks or longer until you were able to put full weight on that side of your body, or it may even have been an injury you never fully recovered from. Many ankle sprains can lead to a permanent loss of balance.

It is this loss of balance that is the precisely the focus of studies regarding recurrent ankle sprains. It’s been known for a long time by clinicians that an ankle sprain, particularly a serious ankle sprain, can lead to a recurrence of ankle sprains. Many people who have the problem once will have it again, and an ankle sprain on one side of the body can set you up for an ankle sprain on the other side.

For a long time, it was thought that this was due to a loss of integrity of the ligaments of the ankle. Most commonly a sprained ankle affects the ligaments on the outside of the ankle. In theory, a loss of the integrity of these ligaments would lead to a loss of stability, which could lead to a second, third, or fourth sprained ankle. This theory fits, but it ignores one of the most important aspects of the ligaments.

All of the ligaments in our body are supplied with neuroreceptors. These neuroreceptors send information to the central nervous system about our body’s position in space. This sensory input, known as proprioception, is vital to maintaining balance.

When the ligaments of the ankle are damaged, so are the proprioceptors of the ligaments. The signals being sent to the brain are no longer as they should be, and we therefore lose a lot of the balance that we once had.

There is an answer, however. With balance training, it is possible to retrain the neuroreceptors in your ankle, and increase your balance and stability in your ankles.

Essentially, balance training can be boiled down to this simple exercise: Stand on one foot. Hold it for a minute, and try not to wobble around too much. Now do it again on your other foot.

That’s all there is to it. If you can increase your balance, you can increase the stability of your ankles. If you find it too easy to stand on one foot for a minute, you can close your eyes. You can cross your arms over your chest so you’re not using them to balance yourself. You can stand on a pillow, making the ground underneath you less stable. All of these tricks will help you to increase your balance, and will have a large impact on preventing ankle sprains.

If you’ve suffered from a sprain lately, or have a history of ankle sprains, do this exercise close to a wall or something that you can grab to retain your balance. Of course, do not try this until you are comfortable with putting all of your weight on one foot. With a very recent ankle sprain, this may take close to two months before you’re ready to work on your balance training.

Central Florida Foot and Ankle Center, LLC.
101 6TH St. NW.
Winter Haven, Fl. 33881
863-299-4551
http://www.FLFootandAnkle.com