I love treating foot pain. I had a patient once who was going in for surgery for plantar fasciitis with in a month. He was in for shoulder pain as well but I did some things for his foot. He had surgery on the other foot for plantar fasciitis and had had mixed results. It never completely got better but it didn’t hurt as bad. After the first treatment, he took his grandchild to the zoo. He walked around for four hours with no pain at all. He canceled his surgery and we continued to work on his foot pain. We finished the course of treatment for his shoulder and each time I also did some treatments for his foot. At the end of that course of treatment, I never saw him again for his foot pain, although he visited for shoulder pain periodically.

The relief people feel from acupuncture is amazing. It’s one of those conditions that no matter how long it’s gone on often reacts very quickly to certain acupuncture treatments. I was taught a different method of treatment than the cited studies used, but I have been at least as successful in treating most foot conditions. The studies focused specifically on plantar fasciitis but I’ve had good luck with a variety of foot conditions.

Nerve pain is the most difficult to cure and the one time I was completely unsuccessful was when I treated a young runner with a neuroma. We did get some pain reduction in the foot but the nerve pain running up the leg when running was rarely relieved. On the occasion when we did get did relief from the nerve pain, the local pain in the foot worsened. After 7 visits, the patient terminated treatment.

I do not use needles in the bottom of the foot. I do use some on the tops and sides of the feet. I find that the bottoms of the feet are very sensitive but their thick skin requires a fairly good poke and such a treatment makes people very uncomfortable. I frequently use a specialized heat technique on the painful area of the foot and then use needles in other areas of the body (including the tops of the feet) to treat the foot pain.

Acupuncture Today and the Medical Acupuncture Online Journal each have a summary of a study (it appears to be the same study) on using acupuncture to treat foot pain