The way that I thought about this episode today is that I just got off the phone, I was on a consultation with a runner and he has a plantar plate injury and he was planning on getting an injection to help the plantar plate sprain heal a little bit faster. He asked me a question that really stopped me in my tracks. He said, “How long should I give it before I throw in the towel?” I thought, well, are you planning for this to not work? I actually literally asked him that, I said “If you’re thinking about when you’re going to decide that this hasn’t worked, that means you have to be planning for it to not work.” Today on the Doc On The Run podcast, we’re talking about why you should not focus on plan B.
View Details »I recently got a call from someone who had a son who was in cross country and he’s been having some trouble. He’s had several weeks of not running, and she wanted to get some advice on what to do.
I got an interesting response via email, where she wanted to know what free advice I had for her son.
First of all, I don’t give advice when I don’t know what the problem is. I didn’t really know the story with her son.
We didn’t do a consultation, and no physician is going to give you advice if they don’t actually know what your circumstances are.
Today on the Doc On The Run podcast, we’re talking about the best free advice for injured runners.
Believe it or not, most of the time when I see a runner, either on webcam or in their home, and they have shin splints, and they’ve been given a fracture walking boot, they need the fracture walking boot and maybe even more. But what that really tells me when a doctor says you have shin splints but you need a boot, that it’s really that the doctor is uncertain about the actual diagnosis, because in my view, most of the time, if you have shin splints, you do not need a fracture walking boot. Should I use a fracture walking boot for shin splints? Well, that’s what we’re talking about today on the Doc On The Run podcast.
View Details »I just saw a comment on our YouTube videos from a runner named Mary. She viewed the video on permanent calf atrophy, and how that can happen if you spend way too long in a fracture walking boot or a cast. Mary replied and basically said, “Great. Now you depressed the crap out of me. Thanks. Ugh.” Realizing that you have lost fitness to the point of atrophy can be really upsetting for any runner. Well, I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you, and that’s what we’re talking about today on the Doc On the Run podcast.
View Details »If you’ve been running and you started having pain on the outside of your foot and then you went to see a doctor who diagnosed you with a thing called a Jones fracture, you’re probably really worried right now and that would be reasonable because most of the time when you get a Jones fracture you might wind up in surgery. I think it’s important, if you’re considering whether or not you could run with a Jones fracture, you really have to think about what a Jones fracture is, where it’s located, why it’s so scary, and what you can do about it. The first thing is, of course, what is a Jones fracture exactly? Can I run with a Jones fracture? Well, that’s what we’re talking about today on the Doc On The Run Podcast.
View Details »I was just on a second opinion telemedicine call with an injured runner. She had a recurring injury that was still keeping her from running. Unfortunately, that injury first started eight years ago. When you have an injury, and you get x-rays, an MRI or a CT scan, or any kind of medical imaging study that shows more detail than the x-rays, you should always get a copy of that disc. This runner’s story is a great example of why you need those images. Today on the Doc On The Run podcast we’re talking about why runners should always get copies of the x-ray or MRI imaging disk.
View Details »Today’s discussion actually comes from a question from a runner in the Monday, Wednesday, Friday Coaching Group.
This is a runner who has a condition called “hallux rigidus.”
He wanted to understand the best way to assess your running shoes. He also wanted to know whether or not it was possible to identify hallux rigidus just by looking at the soles of a runner’s running shoes.
When you get hallux rigidus, your big toe doesn’t actually “dorsiflex” or come up away from the ground enough to allow you to walk or run without doing something to compensate. That shift in the way you walk creates a characteristic wear pattern on the sole of the shoe.
Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast, we’re talking about running shoe wear patterns with hallux rigidus.
View Details »If you suffer a severe running injury, some doctors will give you crutches to speed up the recovery process. Healing any running injury is a race against time. All overtraining injuries will eventually heal. But if you take a long time to heal, you’re going to lose a lot of running fitness. You will get weaker, stiffer and develop a loss of coordination.That loss of fitness will make it very difficult for you to achieve your running goals after you fully recover. The goal isn’t to heal. The goal is to run without re-injury. Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast, we’re talking about the best and worst ways to stop crutches if you’re an injured runner.
View Details »A runner in the in the recovering runners coaching group asked a great question. She had just broken her toe and could barely walk on it. She was really worried that she was going to have to use a fracture walking boot for a month or month and a half to get the toe fracture to heal. She wanted to know specifically when she could start running. Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast, we’re talking about what happens if you run on a fractured toe before it completely heals.
View Details »I get questions all the time on social media from people who want to know if they can run, and at the base of their question is really, how long does it take for some particular injury to heal?
There’s actually a wide variety of timelines on how long it takes for all of different injuries to different types of tissues to heal, even depending upon anatomic location.
Your age plays into the timeline for healing running injuries
Today on the Doc On The Run podcast we’re talking about how long tissue takes to heal so you can run.
