Dr. Tom Biernacki, DPM, FACFAS

Heel Guide is written and reviewed by Dr. Tom Biernacki, a double board-certified podiatric surgeon and Fellow of the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons. He is in private practice in Michigan at Balance Foot & Ankle, with offices in Howell and Bloomfield Township, where heel pain is one of the most common reasons anybody walks through the door.

He also produces foot and ankle education on YouTube, where the same principle applies as here: explain the mechanism, say what the evidence actually supports, and be honest about what is unknown.

Why a whole site about heels

Heel pain is common, it is miserable, and it is unusually badly served online. Three things go wrong repeatedly:

• Everything gets called plantar fasciitis. At least six distinct problems produce pain around the heel, and a couple of them get worse under the treatment that helps the others. A page that treats “heel pain” as one condition is going to be wrong for a meaningful share of its readers.
• The heel spur myth persists. An incidental X-ray finding is still routinely presented as the cause of pain, which sends people looking for a way to remove a piece of bone that was never the problem.
• Timelines get sold, not stated. Recovery from plantar heel pain is usually measured in months. Content promising otherwise sells products; it does not help anybody plan.

This site exists to do the boring, accurate version of all three.

How it is written

Clinical claims rest on practice guidelines, systematic reviews and trials, in that order — and where the evidence is genuinely mixed, the page says so rather than picking a side for the sake of a tidy sentence. Where a statement rests on clinical experience rather than published evidence, it is labelled that way.

Products are a separate discipline. Heel Guide earns affiliate commission, and to keep that from bending the content, a product may only be named once we can state the mechanism that makes it suit the problem, name who it is wrong for, and say honestly whether it was assessed in person. Until a category clears that bar, its page carries no named picks — only the criteria you would use to judge any product yourself.

What this site is not

It is not medical care and it is not a substitute for being examined. It cannot see your foot, feel where the tender point is, test your calf length or watch you walk — and those are the things that actually make the diagnosis. Heel Guide is here so that you understand what your clinician is describing and can ask sharper questions, not so that you can skip the appointment.

Getting in touch

Corrections, questions about the content, and anything else editorial can reach Dr. Biernacki through Balance Foot & Ankle. If something here is wrong, we would rather hear it than not.