My Achilles Heel: Three-Week Update & Vitamin D Information

Here's a quick update on what's been going on with my barefooting lately. It's been non-existent. It's now been three weeks since I was officially diagnosed with a stress fracture and bone contusion in my left heel and just over five weeks since I started noticing pain. The injury occurred as a result of poor training decisions while preparing for a 5K race.

Since the diagnosis I've been faithfully wearing my soft cast boot about 23 hours per day -- the one hour being the time from when I wake up in the morning to when I put it on right before leaving for work. By restricting the motion of the foot and ankle, it's given my heel an opportunity to heal without the achilles tendon pulling on it. That was part of the issue that led to the stress fracture in the first place. The boot's not been a terrible thing. I've gotten used to my ankle and foot being immobilized and I even tweeted a while back that it no longer feels like the boot is on my leg, but instead a part of my leg. I have noticed some atrophy in my calf. Hopefully that won't take a long time to build back up after this is all said and done.

Because of the nature and location of the injury, I've also been non-weight-bearing for most of that three weeks. I have a job that requires a lot of walking, so I've been using a combination of crutches and a wheelchair (pictured) to get around. The wheelchair is used only at work for longer distances (like from building to building) and the crutches are for everywhere else, including shorter treks or spaces in which a wheelchair's not feasible. At first using these devices was a pain, literally. My arms HURT from using them. Now, my arms are much stronger and I come away from each workday simply tired. I'm also finding that I can eat darned near anything I want because I burn most of it off pushing or crutching myself around all day.

My heel doesn't generally hurt like it used to. A lot of that can be attributed to the fact that I have been non-weight-bearing most of the time and the boot is usually immobilizing my ankle joint. I do find that, by the time I'm finished getting ready in the morning, my heel does ache a bit. I hope that it's healing well and that the aching is from the bone contusion that went along with the stress fracture.

I have a follow-up with my doctor next Friday, Feb. 26. It may be that he'll determine that non-weight-bearing for four weeks is enough and I should stick with the boot. Maybe he'll clear me altogether and put me in PT. I kind of hope that's not the case, because I keep hearing that stress fractures of the heel take six to eight weeks to fully recover. I don't want to do anything to jeopardize my recovery and delay my return to running. I guess we'll have to see.

As a side note, but on somewhat related subject, I've begun taking Vitamin D supplements. I've been hearing a lot lately from work and Twitter friends about Vitamin D's relation to bone health. What I've found out is that most people are Vitamin D deficient and that such a deficit can cause bones to be weakened and more susceptible to stress fractures.

I've begun taking 4,000 IU of a Vitamin D3 supplement each day to help boost my levels and then plan on cutting back to about 2,000 IU a day as recommended by a well-known Vitamin D researcher named Michael Holick, PhD, MD (pictured). He recently presented a Grand Rounds on Vitamin D at my workplace and shared a lot of interesting information. To put it simply, he recommends that EVERY adult take a 1,000-2,000 IU supplement of Vitamin D every day to offset the amounts we no longer get from regular sun exposure. More information is available at his Web site, VitaminDHealth.org.

So I'll be non-weight-bearing with the cast boot for another week. I'm hanging in there with only a little pain, but I'm doing what I can to make sure this never happens again by taking a Vitamin D supplement. We'll see what happens.

I welcome your comments below. Also, if you haven't found me on Twitter, I'm a regular user there at the username "BarefootMichael." Come say hi! FYI, my last few "tweets" are always listed in the right panel of this blog.