Struggling with Foot Pain at Night? You’re Not Alone
Yes, they do. In fact, the time of day that people most complain about their feet is after they wake up.
Maybe this is just because they’ve been having pain in their feet for a while, and when they wake up they aren’t used to it after the previous day.
However, the truth is that there are other factors involved that can make a person’s feet hurt while and after they sleep as well.
We may all feel pains throughout the body that will give us little to no sleep on a given night.
We could have a busy day and we plump down exhausted on the bed, but can’t sleep because we pulled a muscle lifting something happened. Those types of nights are among the worst.
Most pains eventually subside, but for people who have to deal with constant pain throughout the day, most nights are like the ones in the above paragraph.
The same is all true for people with pain in their feet as well. Over half, a majority, of people with constant foot pain claim to have too many restless nights.
It’s as if they go to bed without having gone to bed in the first place. If you are one of these people, then it’s important for you to understand what’s happening.
Rest and Exercises
Any kind of pain can interfere with sleep, but regardless of the type of pain, it is, getting plenty of rest and exercise is always a good idea.
The same rule applies for foot pain just as much as it does for other types of pain. In fact, it can actually be deadly for your body to not get enough rest and exercise.
Suffering from sleeplessness is only bound to make your pain much worse, and it’s important that you do something about it.
Beyond making your pain worse, it can also lead to depression and other disorders, from which both your personal and your work life can suffer.
And in the long run, not only might you suffer, but the people around you as well.
Numerous scientific studies have been conducted to confirm this. The pain will make it much more difficult for you to sleep, but not getting enough sleep only makes your pain worse. So the question is, what can you do?
There is actually much that you can do. Good news, right? There are things that you can do either on your own or with your doctor to break this repetitive sequence of pain causing you sleeplessness and sleeplessness causing you more pain.
What you can do is make changes to your lifestyle and take some prescribed medication.
This will not be an easy process. The pain will do whatever it can, and wherever and whenever it can, to attempt to break your fight to get more sleep and fight the pain.
You usually feel the most pain after you wake up. So at least you’ll be comforted in knowing that your plan of attack is working when you wake up in the morning and the pain isn’t as bad as it was yesterday.
The most common pains that interfere with your ability to sleep include headaches, back pain.
Arthritis, fibromyalgia (pain throughout the muscles, tendons and ligaments of the body), nerve pain (or neuropathy), physical injuries, side effects of surgery, diseases (whether they are serious or not serious), jaw pain (also known as TMJ pain), cramps, whether or not you have had pain while sleeping in the past, and foot pain.
What’s unique, if you will call it that, about foot pain, after sleeping is that there are multiple different potential causes for it.
In comparison to the other sources of pain listed, there is typically only one explanation for them.
For foot pain after sleeping, you can usually tell it will need to be checked out if the pain has been consistent and constant.
You may also want to do some extra research into the causes behind foot pain, but we’ll go a little into detail about it here, at least as it relates to sleep.
Foot Pain and Sleeping
Heel spurs are a major cause of foot pain. Hell spur is where calcium is deposited beneath the heel bone, causing bone growth that is extremely painful while walking.
However, this pain is also incredibly painful when you first wake up in the morning regardless of whether you walked or put pressure on it.
Heel spurs are usually caused by wearing shoes that don’t fit your foot properly, running on uneven ground, or having improper posturing.
Another cause of foot pain is plantar fasciitis, which is where the tissue under the foot becomes inflamed. It is this tissue that creates the arch underneath your foot and connects your heel to your toes.
Plantar fasciitis usually results from having flat feet, wearing shoots with arch support that is either too high or too low or from obesity.
Having a pinched nerve is perhaps the most painful type of foot pain there is. This occurs when a nerve becomes compressed, a.k.a “pinched”.
A pinched nerve usually results when running on uneven terrain or wearing shoes that are too tight.
If you have a pinched nerve, you will feel a tingling, numb sensation in your foot, followed by a quick pain that shoots from your body, originating from your foot.
A foot with a pinched nerve also usually hurts worse when you wake up after sleeping.
Last but not least we come to peripheral neuropathy, which is developing high levels of blood pressure, sometimes from diabetes. These high blood pressure levels can lead to nerve damage.
The same symptoms as having a pinched nerve largely apply here: a tingling, numb sensation in the foot and shooting pain throughout the body that originates at the foot.
This pain also becomes worse at night and after waking up.