Heel spurs are a common cause of foot and heel pain in many people… or are they?? It seems only logical, right? You have pain on the bottom surface of your heel. You see a doctor who takes an x-ray of your foot. They show you a piece of bone growing on the bottom of your foot right where you have pain! That’s got to be the cause of the pain, right? Time for surgery to remove that thing…
While extremely large heel spurs can cause some discomfort during strenuous activity, the vast majority of people with heel spurs don’t even realize they have them until they see them on an x-ray. Does that mean we completely ignore a heel spur if we see it on an x-ray? Not necessarily, but the presence of a heel spur is an indicator that something is functionally wrong with the way the foot and ankle are working. Personally, I tend to look at a heel spur as a SIGN of the foot dysfunction/pain and not the root cause.