There are various causes for symptoms beneath the foot and that is often an issue for the professionals to identify it. Among those conditions that is not very common can be an atrophy with the fat pad which is expected to cushion in addition to protect the foot. This fat pad safeguards the bones and also other structures beneath the foot. This may especially be true as well as crucial in athletes whom take part in sports activities which have a great deal of hard impacts on the ground including running. In running they do get the additional stability of a running shoe to support the feet and reduce the impacts. The main signs and symptoms of this condition tend to be relatively unclear and not diagnostic, so often the specialist health professional has to exclude other conditions and remove them as the cause of the symptoms to leave this atrophy of the fat pad as being the explanation for the discomfort. The most frequent sign is simply a vague discomfort below the ball or heel of the foot, that is even worse when standing up and in many cases more painful when carrying out high-impact activities. It's not only painful beneath the foot, the lack of shock absorption may have impacts higher in the body.
The explanation for this atrophy or wasting away of the fat pad is not really clear. It will become a bit atrophied as individuals become older, so it is a natural process. Generally in most this isn't a problem unless of course the atrophy might be major or activity levels are generally higher. It just looks like as we age some atrophy quicker than others and the reason behind this is just not apparent.
When the atrophy of the fat pad is made as being the explanation for the pain the ideal treatment is to place some cushioned insole under the foot in the footwear. The hardness of this pad needs to be similar to the hardness with the the fat pad could be in order to do its protection appropriately. If it is way too soft, this will undoubtedly compress underneath the foot and do nothing at all. If it is way too hard, this will likely make no improvement for the symptoms. All too often the cushioned heel pads are too soft. A soft pad may well feel great should you stick it using your fingers, but if the fingers will flatten the pad, subsequently body mass will also going to compress it and do nothing. These kind of cushioned heel pads can be very useful if you get the correct one.
An alternative is by using fat grafting. This is the surgical procedure which involves taking fat cells and tissue out of another area of the body and placing them underneath the heel and front foot. Although this grafting will likely be useful it's not something that is performed routinely because there is a surgical risk using any operation and the option of the cushioned heel pads is normally more than beneficial, and so the use of operative grafting of body fat will simply be carried out in the most severe cases.