Women who wear high heel shoes are highly prone to get heel spurs, in addition to the people who are into running, jumping and dancing. It mostly affects people with flat feet or people with high angular arch in their feet.
Abnormal Calcium deposit build up on the underside of the heel bone is called a heel spur. It usually occurs when you jog or run barefoot on hard surfaces. Other factors contributing to heel spurs are standing for a long time and tight calf muscle.Obesity and diabetes can be additional risk factors.
Certain lifestyle changes and a selection of home remedies can help you to relieve pain caused by heel spurs.
5 Home Remedies for Heel Spurs Pain Relief
Stretching exercises and rest can usually relieve pain. Conventional medicine recommends painkillers and steroids to reduce pain. Both these methods have severe side effects. Use natural remedies to cure heel Spurs.
1. Magnesium
Magnesium is essential for bone health. It is an essential mineral for utilizing calcium And bone formation in addition to other important functions such as protein synthesis, nerve function and the production of the antioxidant glutathione. Bones store more than 50% of the body's magnesium requirements.
Consume magnesium-rich foods that provide you with the magnesium you need to alleviate a heel spur. Add foods such as avocado, spinach, Swiss chard and bananas in your daily diet. They are all great sources of magnesium.
Other food items such as brown rice, millet, pumpkin seeds, lentils, garbanzo beans, white beans, black-eyed peas, pinto beans, and dried figs also are good sources of magnesium.
While eating these foods will give you long term relief from heel Spurs, you can get instant relief from you heel Spurs pain by soaking your feet in epsom salt. Epsom salt is magnesium sulfate.
- fill a water tub with about 6inch of warm water level.
- Add one cup of Epsom salt and mix it well to dissolve the salt
- soak your feet for 15 minutes
- massage your heels in the tub
This will give you instant relief from heel Spurs pain.
2. Ginger
Ginger is a natural anti-inflammatory substance. It is a great pain relief remedy for heel spurs. Add ginger in your daily diet by adding them as herb in your dishes. In addition drink ginger tea 3 times a day
- cut an inch of ginger root and peel its skin
- shred it in and add to a glass of boiling water
- steep it for 5 minutes
- strain and let it cool to palatable temperatures
- drink the warm ginger tea
3. Alkaline Diet
Our food is generally not balanced. We eat less alkaline food in the current age of packaged food. We not only need to stop eating most of the processed food with lots of sodium chloride that constricts blood vessels.
- Add more green leafy vegetables in your food to balance ph
- add fruits and vegetables in your daily diet
In addition avoid too much calcium rich dairy products and animal protein to reduce pain and inflammation caused by heel spurs.
4. Omega-3 Fatty acids
A balance of Omega-3 and Omega-6 keep your body immunity high and makes you healthy. We get enough Omega-6 from out daily food intake but the required quantity of Omega-3 fatty acids is generally inadequate in most of our diets.
Omega-3 fatty acids are great to control inflammation so adding more omega-3 rich foods in your diet will reduce pain from heel spurs.
- add fish like salmon and sardines in your diet
- add flax seeds in your diet
- take fish oil capsules
5. Exercise
Though it may sound counter intuitive in case of heel spurs to do exercise, but it really is a great remedy to alleviate pain. If you change your sports gear and begin jogging, your heel spurs will be corrected. You need to ensure that the shoes you wear, are of the right kind. When other muscles of the leg strengthens then the inflammation of heel spurs reduces and so the pain.
Make sure that you exercise other parts of the body that are no paining.