Hammertoes Treatment Options: Understanding Non-Surgical Approaches
Hammertoes can be extremely painful and stop you from living your life fully. Want to recover from the severe pain of hammertoe? Read this article and learn about the available treatment options that can be used to treat your hammertoe. Log on to www.doralhw.org for a consultation.
Treatment options
There are many different surgical and non-surgical options available to treat hammertoes depending on factors like age, severity, and cause.
Non-surgical options
These options are suggested when a hammertoe is diagnosed while the muscles in the affected toe are still flexible enough to move from a bent position to their natural position. These options can ease your pain and swelling in the toe and joint. It also helps to redistribute the body’s weight more evenly across the bones and joints of the foot, reducing stress on the toes and allowing your toe to heal. It includes:
- Footwear changes: Your doctor will recommend avoiding wearing tight, narrow, high-heeled shoes. Consider wearing shoes with wide, deep-toe boxes one-half inch longer than your longest toe and for many people, the second toe has a soft roomy toe box. You can also use a stretching device to widen shoes you already own. You can also wear sandals if they don’t pinch or rub other areas of the foot.
- Exercises: Your doctor may recommend some exercises or stretches to strengthen the muscles in your foot. This may include gentle stretches of your toes manually or using your toes to pick things up off the floor. These stretches also work in correcting the alignment of the affected toe.
- Over-the-counter medications: Your doctor may recommend over-the-counter medications to straighten a bent toe and cushion painful parts of the foot. Your doctor may recommend the appropriate product based on the severity of the hammertoe and whether you have corn, which are hard lumps that may form between toes, or calluses, which are areas of thickened skin. Medical tape and splints are used to stabilize the hammertoe and bind it to the next toe to keep it in a straightened position. This helps to eliminate friction between the affected toe and the inside of the shoe. Pads can be worms inside the shoes and act as a buffer between a corn or callus and the shoe. It may relieve pressure and pain caused by shoes rubbing against corn or make walking easier. However, if you have diabetes, poor circulation, or lack of feeling in your feet, you should first consult with a doctor before going for any self-treatment.
- Pain relievers: Your doctor may recommend pain relievers like Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) to lower your pain and swelling. These medications are taken by mouth, and easily available over the counter. However, don’t take NSAIDs for more than 10 days (about 1 and a half weeks) in a row without consulting with your doctor. As it also causes side effects like nausea and headache during usage, your doctor may need to monitor your symptoms.
- Orthotic inserts: Orthotic inserts are recommended to support your feet and keep your toes in the correct position. You may need over-the-counter orthotics or custom-made inserts to place in the space between your affected toes. These also help to redistribute your body weight more across the bones and joints of the foot. It also helps to remove excess stress from your toes and provides pain relief.
If you need help with your hammertoes, visit our podiatry clinic in Brooklyn to get professional help. Visit our podiatrist in Brooklyn to get the best treatment for your foot problems. Doral Health & Wellness employs Podiatrists with extensive education and expertise. Trauma to the tendons, muscles, and bones of the foot is quite common, as are infections secondary to systemic diseases. It’s not a good idea to put off seeing Foot Doctor Brooklyn until you’re in a lot of pain. Our address is 1797 Pitkin Avenue, New York, NY 11212. To make an appointment, please call +1-347-384-5690 or send an email to info@doralhw.org.