Severs Disease is swelling and irritation of the growth plate in the heel. It sounds painful doesn’t it?
Some signs you may have severs disease are swelling of the heel, limping or walking on tippy toes + pain when the heel is being squeezed from both sides.
This disease is mainly found in children who are going through their growth spurt which is usually between the ages of 9-14 years. Or it could be found in people who play a lot of sport with running and jumping, such as basketball.
How do you treat this? Well the first thing is to make sure it’s properly diagnosed as severs.
You are welcome to come into the office and have me look at it or maybe podiatrist could be the right person for you but here are some top tips to help us severs.
- Try and stay off the foot with weight-bearing exercises as much as possible especially when the foot is in a lot of pain
2. Consider doing exercises such as swimming, it is a lower impact sport or maybe bicycle riding instead of running
3. Use an ice packs every evening after exercise for about 10 mins each time.
Use gel heel inserts to help the pressure on the heel + wear open back shoes if you can.
Chiropractors can treat the foot the leg and the pelvis to minimize the impacts that your body has on the ground and make sure that is your child is growing they are getting the best growth possible and making sure that they’re not having any ongoing issues in their spine because that could be more devastating and foot pain..
My middle child Ashton had it and so did a lot of his friends but because of the regular treatment and homework that we did for him and his foot he was able to continue playing sport. Yes he was uncomfortable today after he got through it and has no ongoing issues.
My word of warning though is when parents and/or doctors say that they will just grow out of it. So don’t believe this however…. in part this is true… because as your child slows down in a growth this pain will slow down as well. But you don’t want your child to have pain for months or years do you/ This suffering can be completely unnecessary and could cause other issues , not only that but it might affect the mental well-being… so my advice is don’t ignore it treated properly and allow your kids to have the best upbringing they can without pain.