What can be done for pain on the top of the foot?

Running isn't necessarily a pain free activity and up to 75% of runners could possibly get an injury each year. More frequently that not that exercise related injury is not really sufficient to prevent them exercising and they usually just need to back off a little and make use of some modest treatments to let it get better. At times the injury is major enough that this makes the runner to give up on the running. There are various injuries that may happen to athletes, impacting on numerous areas of the lower limb. One of the most common injuries is what has become known non-technically as “top of foot pain” or ToFP. Medically this is what's called dorsal interosseous compression syndrome. This is an overuse injury which causes pain on the top of the foot, typically about the top point of the arch of the foot. This typically occurs in barefoot runners and athletes who are more likely to forefoot strike as opposed to rearfoot strike first whenever they are running. Running this way has a tendency to try and push the front foot upwards on the rearfoot creating the jamming of the bones of the top of the foot, bringing about the pain in that area.

Initially this is managed with ice to handle the inflammation and maybe anti-inflammatory medications to settle it down. Almost all runners will need to scale back on their weekly distances run also to help settle it down. The ultimate way to address this is to work with more of a heel strike when running and use foot orthotics to help keep the arch up so the jamming in the midfoot doesn't happen. While the change in running technique may well be a good way to help this, it's difficult to perform, which is frequently avoided to start with to try and deal with the problem without doing that. If the other strategies do not work, then a change in the running technique is almost certainly indicated.

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