Can a plantar plate sprain be misdiagnosed as a Morton’s neuroma? Well, that’s a great question, and that’s what we’re talking about today on the Doc On The Run podcast.
Let’s say you have this aching pain in the ball of your foot. You’ve been running and when you run, you get some sort of weird aching soreness in the ball of the foot. You think maybe it’s the second toe. Maybe it’s the third toe. Maybe it’s the fourth toe. You’re not even really sure. You just know it’s in the middle of the ball of the foot and it hurts more when you run and it hurts kind of after you run.
Well, you go see a doctor. They look at you, they poke around and they say, “I think you have a Morton’s neuroma.” Then later you think, based on your self exam, maybe sign up for the Plantar Plate course or something, you figure out either because you got a second opinion, either or you sign up for the Plantar Plate Masterclass and went through those things and started self diagnosing yourself. If you figure out that you actually have a plantar plate sprain, you might get really confused about why it is that someone would misdiagnose you with a neuroma.
Now, first thing you need to understand, if you think you have a plantar plate sprain, but you’re doing the treatment plan that will work for neuromas, you are not going to get better. That’s like trying to treat a heart condition by curing your headache. It’s not going to fix it. It’s a different problem. The problem for you in making this self diagnosis and frankly for your doctor as well is those structures are very, very close together.
So in the Plantar Plate Sprain Course for Runners, I actually had an animator that I hired to sit with me every weekend for like a year. To sit there and actually go through and make 3D animations that show you exactly where you push on your foot to tell the difference between something like a neuroma that’s sitting right next to the plantar plate, or the plantar plate which is sitting right next to the neuroma.
There are a few tests that you can do that actually help you figure out those things on your own. Doctors do them. They just don’t talk about them while they’re doing them normally. But if I had a webcam call with you, that’s exactly what I do. What I would do is literally, on the webcam call, I would sit there and I would say, okay, here’s this video from the Plantar Plate course and this is how you do it. This is where you put your fingers. This is how you pull on the toe. This is where you push. This is where you do not push. What does it feel like when you push there? What does it feel like you when you push there? But they’re really close together.
It is actually very easy to make a misdiagnosis in this comparison between a neuroma sitting between the plantar plates, or one of the plantar plates sitting right next to the neuroma. So always important to get a second opinion. If you feel like you’re doing the stuff you’re supposed to do, but you feel like you’re not getting better, there’s only two possibilities. You’re either doing the wrong stuff and it’s not getting better, or you’re doing the right stuff for the wrong condition.
That’s what happens when somebody gets diagnosed with a neuroma. They start doing stuff to treat the neuroma, but they actually have a plantar plate sprain. So make sure that you know what the difference is between those two things and you’ll get back to running a whole lot faster.
Again, if you want to check account Plantar Plate Masterclass, just go to docontherun.com/plantarplatemasterclass, and you can get it free there. I’ll see you in the training.
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