Editor's note: The Health Tip of the Week is a weekly series in which The Daily News sports staff will get the best advice from a fitness professional to keep River Rival athletes in great shape.
This week's health tip deals with diagnosing and treating common injuries for athletes. Plantar fasciitis and ingrown toenails may not be the most debilitating of injuries, but according to podiatrist Dave Greenblott, who also happens to be the Newburyport High boys soccer coach, both injuries are common and can become quite nagging if not addressed at an early stage.
With Plantar fasciitis, the symptoms are simple. Whether first waking up in the morning, or walking, or perhaps resting and then walking again the indicator is pain in the heal.
Although the injury, like most, has varying degrees of severity determined by which one of the three bands (medial, central, or lateral) has been damaged. In most injured athletes, the problematic band is the medial.
Tip 1: Treatment
Stretching is extremely important, especially coming after a resting period. The first exercise would be to take a tennis ball and roll it around on the floor with the heel and arch of your foot for five minutes adding slightly more pressure as time goes by. The next exercise is calf stretching because a tight calf can pull on the fascia, but the stretching will loosen that up. Finally, ice is also necessary at the end of the day to keep swelling down, 15-20 minutes on, then 40 minutes off for two to three times a night.
Other things that could help are a night splint for sleeping to keep the foot flexed, over the counter orthotics for the shoe, and inflammatory medications such as ibuprofen.
Tip 2: Do's and Don'ts
Specific movements where you are forcefully pushing off and creating tension on the fascia could create further injury. Going up and down on a latter would be one example, playing basketball where lots of cutting is involved would be another.
Continue to stretch and then as you feel better you can start to jog. Once there is no pain after jogging, then you are good to go. For most common injuries athletes should need no more than a week off from activity.
Tip 3: Ingrown Toenails
Although ingrown toenails may be easy to diagnose — symptoms include pain in the nail, inflammation, redness, even drainage — and treat most people don't take care of it the right way.
Ingrown toenails occur for several reasons; some people are born with curved nails, sometimes the toe is stepped on and the nail becomes ingrown, and sometimes the nail becomes deformed and then ingrown.
You should not try to cut the nail out on your own because it may not be the right instrument or the instrument may not be sterile, which can lead to infection. A podiatrist will have the right instrument and can get the ingrown nail out right away.
Once the nail is cut out the healing process is very quick. Soak the nail with warm water and soap, while treating with bacitracin and a band-aid for one to three days, and you should be playing sports without any problems. To prevent future ingrown nails cut your nail straight across instead of to the corners and avoid cutting the nail into the corners.
A lot of athletes try to play through ingrown toenails and then it gets worse. The worst case scenario would be waiting too long (upwards of a year) and having the infected nail then infect the bone in the toe, which is called osteomyelitis. In that extreme case, the bone in the toe sometimes needs to be removed.
E-mail staff writer John Shimer at jshimer@newburyportnews.com with questions, potential ideas, or advice for consideration for the Health Tip of the Week.
