Metatarsalgia is not real. If a doctor ever diagnoses you with metatarsalgia, immediately get up, demand a refund, and find a better doctor. Metatarsalgia simply means pain in the ball of your foot area. If you are seeing a doctor for this, THEN YOU ALREADY KNEW THERE WAS PAIN THERE! Pain in the ball of the foot can be caused by MANY different things. If your medical professional can not give you a better idea of what is causes your pain AND how to treat that cause AND your symptoms, find better help.
Okay, but what is metatarsalgia?
A quick google search will inform of metatarsalgia as such:
“Metatarsalgia (met-uh-tahr-SAL-juh) is a condition in which the ball of your foot becomes painful and inflamed.”
It is similar to term arthritis. Arthritis simply means there is pain, swelling, or tenderness in one or more of your joints. You could potentially say every person in the world has arthritis throughout the week. The diagnosis does not tell you where this pain is coming from. It does not tell you how to fix it. It simply informs you that you have pain………. which you already know…….. which is why you scheduled a doctor appointment…… to pay hundreds of dollars……….. for some dude to tell you, that you do in fact… have pain.
back to foot stuff
So, when you go to the doctor because the ball of your foot hurts, and they then diagnose you with metatarsalgia, I would most likely try to get out of there as quickly as possible and seek out an experienced care provider. Pain in the ball of your foot could be appearing for several different reasons. Is a stress fracture forming? is it just a bruise? Do you have a tear in your plantar plate? A neuroma perhaps? SYNOVITIS PERHAPS?? Doctors love to get fancy and say 2nd mtpj Synovitis! But do you know what that means?! It means you have synovial fluid in that area, which is pretty typical of a plantar plate tear. So again they would have diagnosed you with a symptom. The list of bad diagnostic practices goes on and the treatment differs greatly from cause to cause.
Find a doctor that has the experience and can articulate the intricacies of the foot in a way that you understand and feel confident in the recovery process. Medical bills ain’t cheap and you DESERVE high-quality care.