Rusty,
While I would think that someone among all the doctors you saw would have ruled out gout with a simple blood test for uric acid level, think I should have mentioned that anyway, what with the location of the pain in the ball of the foot, and its appearance in different joints at different times. If you have not had the uric acid level checked, do it when the pain is present in the joints, like the ball of the foot, and not just in the muscles that may be affected by joint dysfunction. The medications for gout – allopurinol, Uloric (febuxostat), are reasonably safe and work very well, along with limited alcohol intake.
Also, I dissent a bit from the diverse footwear approach, if that means experimenting with heavy use of close to zero drops and barefoot gear. Despite the popularity of those, I think that sticking with the type of footwear worn in early life with no problems makes sense, as was alluded to in an earlier post on this thread. Also agree with the post about trying Superfeet inserts. I use a custom orthotic footbed in a very flexible Salomon Authentic mid for road walking (it’s about the dogs), but for rocky and uneven terrain, which presents little in the way of a flat surface, a heavier Salomon mid, Comet 3D, with a Superfeet Green footbed works better because the feet get wrenched around much less. The custom orthotic has very little if any pronation correction, but the orthotics in my street shoes do, and seem to work well. Not sure why these brands and combinations work well – it was just a matter of experimenting with what worked for what type of use. So I expect that such choices involve different strokes for different folks.
