You have a toe — or perhaps a couple — that’s starting to bow upward, turning your toe into its namesake condition — hammertoes.
It may be of some comfort to know you’re certainly not alone. Hammertoes account for 20% of foot and ankle issues, which means millions of other people have them, too.
The second important point is that hammertoes are progressive, so the earlier you take action, the better your outcome and the easier your road ahead becomes.
To that end, Dr. Mariola Rivera, Dr. Lisa Shah, and our team at Aesthetic Podiatry & Sports Medicine Center want to review a few of the effective treatment options we have for hammertoes.
Since hammertoes are progressive, we’ll list these treatment options according to severity, right after we provide a brief explanation of hammertoes
When you bend and straighten your toes, there are muscles on either side that work in concert to achieve both directions. With a hammertoe, there’s an imbalance in these muscles that pulls on the tendons in your joints, which is what creates the contracture of your toe.
Hammertoes tend to strike the middle joint in your second, third, and fourth toes, which is called the proximal interphalangeal joint.
As for why hammertoes form, genetics plays a role, as does footwear that crowds your toes. And other foot issues like bunions can throw off the balance in your feet and lead to hammertoes.
As promised, we’re going to review some best practices and treatments for hammertoes, which include:
We learned that hammertoes are created by an imbalance in your muscles, so it makes sense that targeted exercises can restore this balance. So, if you can flex your toes, we want you to do toe exercises, such as scrunching a towel with your toes or picking up a marble.
This work can be very effective in restoring balance to your toe and your foot.
Another good practice is to take some time each day to stretch your toe out by getting up on your tiptoes or using your hand to guide the toe back. This helps to loosen the muscle that’s pulling on your toe.
If you have hammertoes, stop wearing any shoes that crowd your toes or that place too much pressure on them, such as high heels. Instead, choose footwear that allows your toes to spread out evenly and flatly.
Another way to restore balance to your feet is through custom orthotics. These shoe inserts are molded to your feet and provide support that spreads the workload out more evenly across your toes.
For your comfort, you can try padding on the top of the hammertoe if you’re encountering friction.
In their early stages, hammertoes are flexible, and the treatment options we outline above are designed for those stages. If you don’t address hammertoes early, the contracture can harden, and you are unable to straighten your toe, even with your hand.
When this happens, conservative treatments won’t work, and the only way to correct your toe is through surgery. The good news is that we can perform this surgery on an outpatient basis, which means you can go home the same day to recover.
To figure out which stage your hammertoe is in and which treatment options would work best, see us for an evaluation. To get that set up, you can contact us online or by phone at one of our offices in Purchase or White Plains, New York, to schedule an appointment.
