Sever’s Disease Treatment: Why Rest Is Not The Answer
Understanding Sever’s Disease
Sever’s Disease is one of the most common causes of heel pain in active kids, affecting approximately 115,000 active kids in Australia each year.
The current research out there all arrives at the same conclusion, that Sever’s cannot be cured - it can only be managed.
Common Treatment Methods For Sever’s Disease
Allied health practitioners only have the research to go off, so for years the treatment has been on management techniques.
Advice to parents from podiatrists, physios and osteos has been to do a combination of:
stretches
exercises
massage
taping
icing
heel cups
heel wedges
I’m sure you are familiar with many of these, and are likely familiar with the less than successful outcomes they achieve.
The most common piece of advice parents receive, however, is to simply get their child to rest.
We see a lot of children with Sever’s and speak to a lot of parents, and they all say the same thing - it’s hard enough having to watch their kids suffer with the pain that Sever’s brings, but to then have to stop them playing the sport or activity they love, is beyond distressing.
At the Sever’s Centre, we are the experts on Sever’s disease. We specialise in treating it, using the cutting-edge SOLEMAIDS insoles, and are at the forefront of treatment in Australia.
There is a glaring issue with the current treatment, and the common prescription of rest.
How Sever’s Disease Works
Sever’s is a disease related to the inflammation of the growth plates in the child’s heel. It’s worse during growth spurts, and is exacerbated by impact through the heel via running, jumping & just generally being active, as most kids are.
The growth plates get inflamed, the inflammation causes pain, the impact from sport makes the pain worse. At its simplest, that’s how Sever’s works.
So, therefore, it would make sense that when the child has to rest, and the impact stops, the pain goes away.
But what happens when the child stops resting?
This is something that parents unfortunately find out the hard way.
It’s true, rest reduces the Sever’s pain. But as soon as the child starts playing sport again - the Sever’s pain returns.
The Problem With Rest As A Treatment
This is where the advice from practitioners is fundamentally flawed. Sever’s is related to growth plates in the heel, so the only natural end to Sever’s is to wait until the growth plates have matured, and solid bone has formed.
If resting is the only way to treat Sever’s, then kids would simply have to rest until their growth plates have matured.
Of course, it’s completely impractical to tell children they need to rest until their growth plates have matured - this can take years.
We saw a child recently who had been suffering with Sever’s for 5 years.
That’s 5 years of resting, trying to resume playing, having to rest again, missing out on milestone sporting achievements and finals - the cycle was endless, and incredibly distressing for all concerned.
Sever’s does not get cured via resting, it’s very important to understand that.
Symptoms will reduce, but as soon as activity resumes, they will flare up again.
We’ve had numerous parents reach out to us and cancel appointments because their child is “feeling okay at the moment” or their Sever’s pain “got better”. This is an all too common misconception parents have in relation to Sever’s. It’s through absolutely no fault of their own, many of them have simply been given wrong information by their podiatrist or their physio - or they just don’t understand the disease. Which is, again, through no fault of their own; parents have enough on their plate without having to become experts in Sever’s disease.
An easy way to think about it is like this.
If you’ve ever had a crack or a hole in your tooth, you’d know that you experience pain when impact (chewing) went through it, but if you simply chewed your food on the other side of your mouth, you wouldn’t have any pain.
It didn’t mean that the hole or crack was ‘cured’ - there was still a hole there - and if you had booked a dentist appointment to get it fixed, it certainly wouldn’t mean you called up and cancelled the appointment.
The same principle applies to Sever’s and rest - it merely reduces the symptoms, it does not cure the cause.
Introducing Our Treatment For Sever’s Disease
You may be wondering then, what does cure Sever’s?
At the Sever’s Centre, we are at the forefront of Sever’s disease treatment in Australia.
Innovation in treatment has caught up to the current, outdated management methods.
It hasn’t just caught up, its flown past.
We can now cure Sever’s disease in a one hour appointment. 9 out of 10 children will walk in with Sever’s pain, and will walk out with that pain significantly reduced - in many cases completely eliminated.
It’s not uncommon for children to come in with 9 or 10/10 pain, and after being fitted with the SOLEMAIDS insoles, leave with 0/10 pain.
We know - it sounds too good to be true, but so did penicillin when that was first developed, didn’t it?
To learn about our treatment methods, and how the cutting-edge SOLEMAIDS insoles can provide an actual cure for your child’s Sever’s pain, click here.
