Other Toe, Foot and Ankle Problems

Most skin problems that affect your feet are more annoying than they are serious. If you have:

• The feeling of walking on pebbles: You may have plantar warts on the bottom of your feet.
• Patches of thick and tough skin on the heel or ball of your foot: You may have a callus, corn, blister, or skin growth.
• Red, peeling, cracking, burning, and itchy skin between your toes or on the bottom of your feet: You may have athlete's foot. Or maybe your feet are reacting to the shoes you wear (shoe dermatitis).
• Red, swollen, and painful skin around a toenail: You may have an ingrown nail or an infection around your nail (paronychia).
• Red, swollen soles of your feet that are painful to the touch or when you walk: You may have a bacterial infection. Public showers, hot tubs, or swimming pools are common areas where bacterial infections, athlete's foot, and warts can be spread to your feet.

Toe joints are more likely to have problems than other joints in your feet.

• Heat, pain, redness, swelling, and extreme tenderness that comes on quickly in your big toe joint may be caused by gout. Similar symptoms can occur with an infection.
• If you have swelling or a bump at the base of your big toe, you may have a bunion.
• If you have a bump on the outside of your little toe, you may have a bunionette, also called a Tailor's bunion.
• If your toes, other than your big toes, bend in an odd position, you may have hammer toes, mallet toes, or claw toes.
• Joint pain, stiffness, and swelling are common when you have conditions such as bursitis, arthritis, lupus, or gout.

You may have pain in the front (ball) of your foot (metatarsalgia) or in your heel. Heel problems often occur when you overuse calf muscles, wear shoes with high heels, or do activities, such as running, that cause repeated pounding on your heels.

• Sharp pain on the bottom of your heel may be caused by plantar fasciitis.
• Pain in the back of your heel and ankle may be caused by Achilles tendinitis or tendinosis (tendinopathy) or retrocalcaneal bursitis.
• Pain that's worse before or after exercise but improves during exercise may be caused by a stress fracture of a bone in your foot (usually a metatarsal bone).
• Small bony growths under your heel bone may be a heel spur.
• Pain in the middle of your foot may be caused by "fallen arches" or by being flat-footed.
• Pain or a bump on the back of the heel is a type of bursitis called Haglund's deformity.

Many conditions may affect the nerves of the foot and cause numbness, tingling, and burning.

• Pain, burning, tingling, or numbness that occurs between your toes, especially the third and fourth toes, and in the ball of your foot may be caused by a growth around the nerves (Morton's neuroma).
• Pain, numbness, and tingling that starts in your back or buttock and moves down your leg and into your foot may be sciatica. It's caused by a pinched nerve (nerve root compression).
• Foot and ankle pain that occurs with numbness and weakness in your foot may be caused by a pinched nerve in your ankle (tarsal tunnel syndrome) or back (sciatica).
• Burning, numbness, or lack of feeling in your feet may be caused by poor circulation. This is most common in people who have diabetes or peripheral arterial disease. The circulation problem can lead to nerve damage (peripheral neuropathies). Foot problems are more likely to occur in people who have these conditions.