Bunions, if you have one you know because you have to pass up those fancy shoes that offer no comfort, yet only style. There are some boots that women with bunions can't wear but that's no problem for Lisa Snyder who dresses for comfort not style. She's had a bunion since she can remember.
"I was born like that. It seemed like an extra bone in my foot, it's genetic," said Snyder.
“A bunion is a deformity of the foot where the bones are misaligned so what ends up happening is you have these two bones that should be parallel and one of them starts to shift in and causes the big toe to come inward," said podiatrist Dr. Jennifer Hutton.
The force of the bones pulls on muscles and tendons that insert into the big toe and causes it to pull and a bump forms on the side of the foot. It affects children, women and men.
“We do find that of most of the men who come in with them they are coming in with larger bunions because men have a lot easier shoe to fit them in. So usually, when the men get really severe or really bad they are coming in with a lot of pain. Where the shoes that women wear are narrow and pointy that they can have very small bunions and have pain,” Hutton said.
Not everyone needs treatment. Some people have bunions their entire life and feel no pain; all they have to do is avoid wearing certain shoes.
Bunions, if you have one you know because you have to pass up those fancy shoes that offer no comfort, yet only style.
“Conservatively, depending on the pain, we use ice and anti-inflammatories. If it is just that the bump is hurting in a certain shoe sometimes we will pad it. Besides that, if it comes in and somebody has terrible pain, we give cortisone injection just to get it to flare down, but it’s no getting rid of it,” said Hutton.
In mild cases, the side bump can be surgically removed. Moderate cases involve more of the bone.
"We are moving the head of the bone over and by doing that we are actually causing a fracture of the bone and somebody needs to stay of the foot until the bone heels which is usually a six week post op recovery,” said the doctor.
And in severe cases, more of the foot bones are involved and recovery can last up to 12 weeks. A rule of thumb with a bunion-ectomy; if it doesn't hurt, leave it alone.
"If somebody comes in with a bunion and they say it is for cosmetic reasons, it's not time to fix it. You fix a bunion when it hurts, when its changing your lifestyle, is when it’s really bothering you," Doctor Hutton said.