Here is how I cured my jammed big toe pain after injuring it from a karate kick.
Many years ago while sparring in karate class, I threw a kick to my opponent, who was wearing a chest protection vest.
I don’t know if my big toe made direct contact only with the rather hard vest, or if somewhere in there, it connected with her arm or hand.
But the impact was very painful, and I thought, “I just hammed my big toe.” The pain lingered all day long.
At the time I had no medical insurance and tried to heal it simply by taking it easy.
I went to three doctors (they had ads in the paper advertising a free consult), and one even injected cortisone. Ice and rest, along with the cortisone, did absolutely no good.
Every time I jogged I felt the pain. After 10 months, I was really discouraged, figuring I was stuck with a painful big toe for the rest of my life. Jumping was out of the question.
My jogging was limited to a very slow pace, and with each step, I could feel the unhappiness in the big toe.
Then one day I had an epiphany: Do the very thing that aggravates it, but keep the motion just under the radar, or, to put it another way, just short of the threshold where the pain would begin.
The motion was that of going up and down on the ball of my foot, which would make the big toe extend.
Standing on a stable surface (living room carpet) and only in my socks, hands on the back of a chair, I went up, then down, up, then down, for 12 repetitions.
I went up only as high as the beginning of that threshold, which seemed to be about half as high as the joint could normally extend. I did one set, three times a day.
In addition, I soaked the foot in hot bathtub water for 15 minutes, three times a day.
At the conclusion of each soaking, I gently moved the toe with my fingers, back, then forth.
After drying it off, I then picked up a sock by scrunching my toes to grip it, off the floor, then released the sock. I did about 10 repetitions of this.
After three weeks, the pain in my big toe was GONE! Mobility had returned! It was as good as new!
