Foot Pain Chart - Find Your Foot Pain Causes by Location

Foot pain is common, and that’s not a surprise. Our feet are complex, with over a hundred muscles, 26 bones, and 33 joints (and that’s without even counting tendons or ligaments) - and we put our feet through a lot of stress as we go about our day. When faced with sudden foot pain, most of us give it some time to see if it goes away on its own, while trying to figure out what might be causing the pain.

Podiatrists and physical therapists use many clues to diagnose the cause of foot pain, including the location of the foot pain. It’s not an end-all-be-all, but pain location is a key part of foot pain diagnosis.

What can cause foot pain? There are too many to list, from simply standing for a long period of time or increasing your weekly run mileages, to aging, injury, or even wearing ill-fitting shoes. As an at-home physical therapy company, we at Alleviate specialize in giving you tools and methodology to treat foot pain from chronic overuse injuries. So, in this article, we’ll primarily focus on helping you find your chronic injury-related foot pain causes, using a foot pain chart.

Keep in mind that the same condition can manifest differently for different people.

• If you have Plantar Fasciitis, for example, you may not have pain in both the arch and the heel; or you may have pain in both locations.
• Similarly, your pain may not be exactly where it's shown in the foot pain chart. For example, some people with PTTD feel localized pain in the inner ankle, but others feel pain radiating out of that area.

So, it's a good idea to leave some room for flexibility when you're using the foot pain chart to understand the cause of your pain.

Causes of top of foot pain include osteoarthritis, sprains, gout, and extensor tendonitis (inflammation or irritation of the tendons at the top of your foot that let you lift your toes and bring your ankle up).

Pain in the bottom of your foot is quite common. Some of the major causes of bottom of foot pain include:

• Plantar Fasciitis: an overuse injury of the ligament that connects your heel bone to your toe bones, Plantar Fasciitis is one of the most common causes of foot pain overall. Plantar Fasciitis pain is usually felt on the bottom of your foot, in particular the arch and the heel.

• Flatfoot (also called flat feet, fallen arches)

• Posterior Tibial Tendonitis (PTTD)

• Bursitis: bursitis is a painful inflammation and swelling of the fluid-filled sacs that cushions your joints (called bursa), including those in your foot. Bursitis is also associated with overuse.

• Osteoarthritis

The arch of your foot is the spring that absorbs the shock and supports the load of your body every time you take a step or stand. Given the stress that the arch goes through every day, it’s a very common location of foot pain from overuse injuries. Causes of arch pain include:

• Plantar Fasciitis

• Posterior Tibial Tendonitis (PTTD): another overuse injury, PTTD affects the tendon in your ankle that maintains the shape of your arch. PTTD pain is often felt in the arch, as well as on the inside of your ankle.

• Flatfoot (flat feet, fallen arches)

• Overpronation: overpronation happens when the arch of your foot flattens, making you walk on the inside of your foot.

In the foot pain chart above, overpronation pain is shown in the ankle and arch for simplicity. Because it affects your gait and the alignment of the entire kinetic chain, it can cause pain in multiple areas, even outside of the foot including your ankle, calf, knee, or hip, depending on the specifics of your biomechanics.

• Plantar Fasciitis

• Achilles Tendonitis: another common overuse injury, Achilles Tendonitis affects the tendon in the back of your ankle that works to raise you up on your toes. Achilles Tendonitis typically causes pain in the ankle and the heel.

• Heel spurs: a heel spur is a calcium buildup that becomes a bony growth on the bottom of your heel bone. Heel spurs develop over time, due to repetitive stress placed on the ligaments in the foot, often associated with Plantar Fasciitis.

• Bursitis

As the foot pain chart shows, some of the foot pain conditions also trigger pain in the ankle.

• Achilles Tendonitis: the affected tendon is in the back of your ankle, where the pain is typically felt.

• Posterior Tibial Tendonitis (PTTD): the tibialis posterior tendon that’s affected by PTTD runs on the inside of your ankle. Pain on the inside of your ankle, sometimes accompanied by arch pain or calf pain, is a sign of PTTD. Though less widely known than Achilles Tendonitis, PTTD is one of the top ankle pain causes.

• Flatfoot (flat feet, fallen arches)

• Overpronation

• Peroneal Tendonitis: the pain can be felt on the outside of your ankle, where the two peroneal tendons originate.

Pssst, we have PT tips on treating inside ankle pain from PTTD!

Pain location alone isn’t always enough for doctors and physical therapists to make a diagnosis. Detailed history, like your general activity levels, what triggers pain, how long the pain has been around, how it started, and if you have other conditions or symptoms, is an integral part of diagnostic work at a good physical therapy practice.

That said, you can figure out yourself if your foot pain is from some of these conditions with a combination of key questions and a test or two. Take our foot and ankle pain quiz below (designed for our co-founding physical therapist for those of you who find it difficult to make it to a great PT!) for a 3-minute diagnosis.

Effective treatments for foot pain should start with understanding the root cause(s). Once the causes are identified, your treatment plan should specifically target those root causes. Many of the repetitive stress injuries (overuse injuries) of the foot have three causes contributing to their development:

• Imbalance between your body’s capacity and the amount or variety of load it takes: you may have dramatically increased the stress on your foot without adding strength to support it when you started playing pickleball, for example.

• Weakness and instability in the lower body that puts excess stress on the affected tissue: a muscle, tendon, or ligament doesn’t take the load in isolation. All components of your lower body work together to move your body and absorb the stress of your daily activities. When there’s a weakness somewhere in the kinetic chain, that can overstress other tissue, leading to a repetitive stress injury.

• Problems within the tissue affected by the condition: once a tissue starts experiencing strain and develops inflammation or microscopic tears, that tissue not only causes pain but becomes problematic in itself. It can develop adhesions, form scar tissue that’s weaker than healthy tissue, and become more susceptible to injuries.

By addressing all three, you’ll be able to relieve foot pain quickly, and resolve the root cause of the pain for the long term.

Physical therapy is one of the most effective, non-invasive treatment approaches to foot pain caused by repetitive stress. However, for many people in the United States, it can be a challenge to receive excellent physical therapy care on a consistent basis.

• Long wait: In many areas, it can be 6 weeks before you can get your first appointment.

• High out-of-pocket cost: Even with good insurance, cost can be prohibitive, often at $50 or more for each visit. It can add up when an ideal treatment regimen has you at your PT’s office 2-3 times a week for 8 or more weeks. (The math says $800 at the lower end!)

• Logistical challenges: For many of us, fitting in twice-a-week PT visits into your schedule is a challenge. Work, family, social life, or school - something would have to be sacrificed.

The good news is, there are now an effective at-home treatment for Plantar Fasciitis and a home PT treatment for PTTD that let you replicate the gold standard of physical therapy.

Alleviate was founded by a patient-and-clinician duo to bring the effective chronic pain treatment from physical therapy offices to everyone's home. With our Plantar Fasciitis System 2 or PTTD System, you can use the Alleviate Method to recover from these foot or ankle pain conditions at home. You'll get all the guidance, methodology and tools you need to take control of Plantar Fasciitis or PTTD, without a visit to a doctor's office.