Treatment Options for Fat Pad Atrophy in the Foot

There are numerous causes for soreness under the foot and that can sometimes be difficult even for the specialists to diagnose it. One of those conditions that is not really very common is an atrophy of your fat pad that is meant to cushion and safeguard the foot. This fat pad safeguards the bones along with other tissues beneath the feet. This will likely especially be real and crucial in athletes whom engage in sports that have a lot of hard impacts with the ground for example running. In running they actually do get the additional protection of a running shoe to cushion the foot and reduce the forces from the ground. The main signs and symptoms of this problem are somewhat imprecise and non-specific, so often the expert health professional has to rule out other problems and do away with them as the cause of the symptoms to leave this atrophy with the fat pad as the explanation for the problem. One of the more obvious manifestation is just a unexplained discomfort below the ball or heel of the foot, which is worse when standing up and even more painful if engaging in high-impact exercises. It is not only painful underneath the foot, this reduced shock absorption can have influences higher up the body.

The reason for this atrophy or wasting away of the fat pad isn't obvious. The fat pad does become a bit wasted as individuals become older, so it is a natural thing. In most this isn't a concern unless the wasting is significant or if activity levels are higher. It just appears that as we age some waste at a quicker rate than the others and the source of that is just not apparent.

After the wasting in the fat pad is established as being the explanation for the condition the most beneficial therapy is to place some shock absorbing padding beneath the foot inside the shoe. The hardness with this padding has to be identical to the density of what the fat pad could be in order to do its protection properly. When it is too soft, this will undoubtedly compress underneath the foot and do nothing at all. Should it be too hard, this is likely to make virtually no improvement to the pain. All too often the cushioned heel pads tend to be too soft. A soft pad would possibly feel great should you poke it using your fingers, but when the fingers will flatten the pad, then body weight will also likely to compress it and do nothing. These cushioned heel pads could be very effective when you get the right one.

An alternative choice is by using fat grafting. This is the surgical operation that requires getting fat cells as well as tissue out of another area of the body and putting them under the heel and ball of the foot. Even though this grafting is usually effective it is not necessarily a procedure which is performed often because there is a operative risk with any procedure and the use of the cushioned heel pads is generally a lot more than beneficial, so the using operative grafting of fat tissue will simply be done in the more severe cases.