Are you experiencing pain in the ball of your foot near your big toe? Then you may have sesamoiditis or some other sesamoid bone related injury.

Sesamoiditis means a tendon connection of your sesamoid bone is inflamed. This chronic bone tendon inflammation is caused by overuse and increased pressure on your sesamoid bone.

With sesamoiditis you’ll experience an intermittent and gradually increasing dull pain under your big toe joint. Swelling and bruising may also develop around your sesamoid bone as well. This tendon inflammation pain will usually occur while wearing certain shoes or participating in a particular fitness activity.

Treatment of sesamoiditis generally involves:

• aspirin, ibuprofen to relieve pain
• stop wearing shoes that cause pain
• tape your toe in a slightly bent down position
• refrain from the fitness activity causing the pain
• cortison injection to reduce tendon inflammation
• wear only soft-soled, low heeled shoes or stiff-soled clogs
• use a pads that relieves stress on sesamoid bone & tendons

If treatment fails to relieve your bone tendon inflammation symptoms, then you might try wearing a removable short leg fracture brace for a couple of months. Ultimately, there’s always surgery to remove your sesamoid bone that’s causing your sesamoiditis.

A sesamoid bone means it has no ligament attachment, it’s just embedded in a tendon. Sesamoid bones are in several joints of the body and the ball of your foot, below the big toe joint, is where two small ones are located.

The sesamoid bone of the foot helps provide leverage and absorbs some of the weight during activities like walking, running and jumping. Because of the increased amount of repetitive pressure placed on this foot bone, sesamoid injuries are a fairly common among athletes.

The basic types of sesamoid injuries include:

• turf toe ~ overextension of big toe
• fracture ~ break, hairline fracture of a sesamoid
• sesamoiditis ~ chronic inflammation of tissue surrounding sesamoid

And a sesamoid injury is one of the causes for metatarsalgia.

Treatment for sesamoid injuries starts with refraining from the fitness activity that caused the injury. Next, a couple of the possible treatments that may be used while your sesamoid injury heals:

• turf toe~ toe taped to adjacent toe to relieve tension
• sesamoiditis ~ padding placed in the shoe to cushion sesamoid area
• fracture ~ immobilization via cast w/crutches or removable walking cast

And this type of injury may take several months to heal completely.

NSAIDs and analgesics, such as ibuprofen or aspirin, may be recommended to relieve pain and inflammation. Extreme discomfort may require a cortisone injection.

Physical therapy, orthotic device, ultrasound or surgery are other sesamoid treatment options as well.