What causes frequent foot pain in children?

Children often experience foot pain, which is most likely a symptom caused by growing pains. As children grow, their bones will gradually grow, and some pain is inevitable during the growth process. Parents must have a comprehensive understanding of growing pains and help their children solve this problem. Here is some information about growing pains!

1. Causes

1. Children who grow faster, aged between 2 and 12 years old, most commonly between 4 and 9 years old, with more boys than girls; 2. Excessive activity, such as the day after a group outing in a kindergarten, many children had leg pain at the same time; 3. Cold factors, such as weather changes or cold at night; 4. Upper respiratory tract infection, some scholars believe that viruses can cause growing pains; 5. Individual factors, children with allergies are prone to growing pains.

2. Clinical Characteristics

1. Irregularity and diversity of duration of onset. Generally, there is no regular pattern and the disease may occur several times a month, or once every six months or a year. Each attack may last for a few hours at the shortest and several days or even more than ten days at the longest. According to statistics, most of them last for 1 to 3 days and most of them have no warning signs and are sudden onset.

2. Multi-location and relative joint fixation. Growing pains in children can occur in any part of the limbs and joints. But it is more common in lower limbs than in upper limbs, in knee joints than in other joints, on the right side than on the left side, and in unilateral limbs than in bilateral limbs; in addition, it can be seen in shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, ankle and other joints.

3. The nature and differences of pain. More than half of the children did not complain of limb pain, but only presented with limp. Most of the painful parts had no obvious positive signs, most had no movement disorder, and no local redness or swelling. The pain varied greatly, either unbearable or uncomfortable. Some were accompanied by short-term mental fatigue, loss of desire for activity, poor diet, etc.; generally no fever.

3. Prevention and Treatment

Avoid letting children play excessively, prevent them from catching cold, and add clothes in time as the weather changes; if they suffer from colds and enteritis, they should seek timely treatment. If it is confirmed to be growing pains, the most important treatment measure is to limit activities, which is very necessary for recovery; secondly, warming measures should be taken, and most pains can gradually disappear; for older children, oral vitamin C and vitamin B6 can be taken to shorten the course of the disease; if the pain is severe, painkillers can be taken under the guidance of a doctor.