Better Care for Shin Pain, Ankle Sprains, and Chronic Ankle Instability — So You Can Walk, Hike, and Stand Steady Again
Advanced, Non-Surgical Treatment for Shin Splints, Ankle Sprains, and Chronic Ankle Instability — Serving Marble Falls and Highland Lakes
You know the feeling — whatever version of it has been following you around.
Maybe it’s the deep, drilling ache along the inside of your shin that starts five minutes into every hike and never quite goes away. Maybe it’s the swollen, purple, “I just stepped wrong on a curb” ankle that’s now keeping you off the pickleball court for the third time this year. Or maybe it’s something quieter and more unsettling — that hesitation you feel every time you step off a curb, walk on gravel, or carry the groceries up uneven stairs. The sense that your ankle could give way, and that next time it might be the fall that changes everything.
These are three different problems with three different stories. But they share two things in common: they are almost always mechanical, not structural — and they are almost always treatable without surgery, ankle reconstruction, or being told to “just take it easy from now on.”
You don’t have to live with it. And you almost certainly don’t need surgery.
Medicare and most major insurance plans accepted.
(active adults — hiking, pickleball, lake walk)
Meet Dr. Frank Henry
(shin & ankle focus)
— coming soon —
Trusted by Patients Across the Highland Lakes
“I’d been told for two years that my shin pain was just from getting older. Dr. Henry actually looked at how I was walking, found a mechanical issue no one had checked, and built me orthotics that fixed it. I’m back to hiking the Pennybacker trail every Saturday — pain-free for the first time since my fifties.”
— Susan H., Spicewood“I sprained my ankle stepping off a boat dock at Lake LBJ last summer. The urgent care told me it was ‘just a sprain,’ wrapped it, and sent me home. Six months later I was still rolling it every other week — and getting scared. Dr. Henry’s ultrasound showed two ligaments that hadn’t healed correctly. He fixed it without surgery. I’m back on the boat without thinking twice.”
— Robert M., Kingsland“An Austin surgeon told me I needed Brostrom reconstruction — full ligament surgery — for my chronic ankle instability. I wasn’t ready for that, so I drove out to Marble Falls for a second opinion. Dr. Henry showed me on his ultrasound that the ligaments were actually healed; the problem was the way my foot was loading. Custom orthotics and a few weeks of targeted work, and I haven’t rolled it in over a year. The surgery would have been a mistake.”
— Linda P., LakewayWhich One Sounds Like You?
This page covers three connected problems. Jump to the one that matches what you’re dealing with — or read all three. Many patients have more than one going on.
Shin Splints (Medial Tibial Stress Syndrome)
“It feels like a deep ache running up the inside of my shin. It starts a few minutes into a walk and gets worse the longer I’m on my feet.”
Shin splints — the clinical name is medial tibial stress syndrome — is one of the most consistently misdiagnosed and mistreated lower-leg problems we see. Patients are told to stretch more, ice more, rest more, take Aleve, switch to a softer shoe. Most of those instructions are aimed at the symptom, not the cause.
Here’s what’s actually happening: shin splints are almost never a “weak calf” problem or a “running too much” problem. They are a biomechanical loading problem. With every step, your foot is rolling, pronating, or collapsing in a pattern that pulls excessively on the muscles and connective tissue that attach along the inside of your shin bone. Over hundreds of thousands of steps, those attachment points become inflamed, irritated, and eventually painful with even light activity.
You can rest the leg for six weeks. The moment you load it again with the same mechanics, the pain comes back. Until the underlying mechanics are corrected, the cycle continues — and in a small but real number of patients, untreated chronic shin splints progress to a tibial stress fracture, which does require formal immobilization for weeks.
What’s Different About How We Treat It
- We use diagnostic ultrasound in the office to rule out stress fracture and tendon involvement at your first visit.
- We perform a full biomechanical evaluation — barefoot, in your shoes, and during gait — to identify the exact pattern causing the overload.
- We use orthopedic taping as a same-day diagnostic test. If taping reduces your pain on the spot, we know your shin pain is mechanically driven and will respond beautifully to a custom orthotic.
Acute Ankle Sprains
“I stepped wrong. Now it’s swollen, purple, and I can’t put weight on it — and I’m not sure if I need an X-ray or just need to ice it.”
A “sprained ankle” is almost a throwaway diagnosis. It’s used to describe everything from a mild stretch of one ligament to a near-complete tear of three — and the treatment for those two extremes is very different. The single biggest mistake we see is patients being wrapped, given crutches, and sent home from urgent care with no diagnostic imaging of the soft tissue and no real plan for what happens next.
That matters because what happens in the first two weeks after a sprain determines whether your ankle becomes 100% normal again or whether it joins the long list of “I twist it twice a year for the rest of my life” patients we see in their fifties, sixties, and seventies.
What We Do Differently for Acute Sprains
- Same-week evaluation. Don’t wait two months hoping it’ll feel better on its own. The earlier we see it, the cleaner the recovery.
- In-office diagnostic ultrasound. We look at every ligament involved — usually the anterior talofibular, calcaneofibular, and deltoid — and assess for partial or complete tears. We also evaluate the peroneal tendons, which are frequently injured alongside the lateral ligaments and routinely missed at urgent care.
- Digital X-rays in the office. Reviewed with you on-screen, in real time. Most sprains aren’t fractures — but we rule it out before we make a plan.
- Functional offloading. Walking-boot or bracing protocols that allow you to stay mobile and weight-bearing while the ligaments actually heal in the correct position.
- Honest answer on timeline. Mild sprains: two to three weeks. Moderate: six to eight. Severe: longer, but still nearly always non-surgical.
The goal is full, complete healing the first time — so it doesn’t become the chronic instability problem in the next section.
Chronic Ankle Instability — When Your Ankle Won’t Stop Giving Out
“It’s not painful most of the time. It’s the feeling — that hesitation every time I step on something uneven. I’ve started avoiding hikes, gravel driveways, even stairs without a rail. And I’m not the only one who’s noticed.”
Chronic ankle instability is one of the most under-treated conditions in foot and ankle medicine, and it’s also one of the most consequential — especially after age sixty.
In younger patients, an unstable ankle is a frustration. It costs them pickleball matches, hiking trips, basketball games. In older patients, it is something different and more serious: it is the leading mechanical driver of falls. And falls — not heart attacks, not cancer — are the most common reason an active, independent person in their seventies suddenly isn’t independent anymore.
The Story We Hear Over and Over
You sprained your ankle once, years ago — maybe decades ago. It “got better” but never quite felt right. Then you sprained it again. And again. Each time, the ligaments healed a little looser. Now, even on flat ground, your ankle has a mind of its own. You compensate without realizing it — gripping the rail tighter, avoiding the lake path, taking the long route to skip the curb. You start to feel older than you actually are.
Many surgeons recommend a Brostrom procedure — surgical ligament reconstruction — for chronic ankle instability. There is a place for that surgery, but it is much smaller than it is offered. In the large majority of patients we see, the ligaments are not the primary problem. The primary problem is foot mechanics. The foot is rolling in or out with every step, putting the ankle into a vulnerable position before the ligaments ever get involved.
Correct the mechanics, and the ankle stabilizes — often without ever touching the ligament itself. Before you agree to ligament reconstruction surgery, get a second opinion that includes a diagnostic ultrasound of the ligaments and a full biomechanical evaluation. The surgery cannot be undone.
What We Do
- In-office diagnostic ultrasound to image each lateral ligament and determine whether they are truly torn, healed loose, or completely intact.
- Biomechanical evaluation to identify exactly how your foot is loading on each step.
- Orthopedic taping as a same-day diagnostic. If taping the foot into a corrected position immediately steadies the ankle, that is powerful evidence that custom orthotics will resolve the instability without surgery.
A Complete Approach to Shin and Ankle Stability
Three systems, working together. This is how we resolve shin pain, finish off sprains properly, and stop ankles from giving out — without surgery, in the large majority of patients.
1. The Blueprint
High-End Custom Orthotics: The foot is the foundation. If the foot is rolling, collapsing, or loading incorrectly, no amount of stretching, bracing, or rest will resolve the problem above it. Following a non-weight-bearing scan and full biomechanical evaluation, we engineer prescription orthotics that correct the loading pattern overloading your shin or destabilizing your ankle. We don’t make a souvenir of your collapsed foot — we engineer the correction.
2. The Signaling
Restoring the Healing Response: For chronic shin splints, partially healed sprained ligaments, and the soft-tissue damage that follows years of ankle rolls, we use advanced restorative interventions to deliver a focused biological signal to the damaged tissue, triggering it to lay down healthy, organized tissue again — the way it’s supposed to.
3. Specialized Tools
Shockwave, Class IV Laser, and Diagnostic Ultrasound: Extracorporeal Shockwave Therapy and Class IV Laser Therapy accelerate cellular repair in damaged tendons, ligaments, and the connective tissue attachments along the shin. Diagnostic musculoskeletal ultrasound — done in the office, in real time — lets us see exactly what’s torn, healed, or still inflamed, so the treatment plan is built around what’s actually wrong, not a guess.
(clinical setting)
Meet Dr. Frank J. Henry DPM, FACFAS
“I see a lot of patients in their sixties and seventies who tell me their ankle ‘has always been a little weak.’ What they don’t realize is that ‘always been a little weak’ is what makes them fall. We can fix that — almost always without surgery — and the difference it makes in their next twenty years is enormous.”
Dr. Frank Henry DPM is a board-certified Foot and Ankle Surgeon and a Fellow of the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons. Over more than 30 years of practice and 40,000 patients treated, he maintains a 95% surgery avoidance rate.
Today, Dr. Henry uses his extensive surgical background to do the opposite of what many specialists do — he keeps patients out of the operating room. You’ll never feel rushed in his office. You’ll get a real evaluation, a real explanation, and a real plan.
What to Expect at Your First Visit
Plan on about an hour. Unhurried, thorough, and built around getting you a real answer the same day.
- Thorough history and goals. What’s happening, what you’ve tried, what you want to get back to doing.
- In-office digital X-rays — reviewed with you on-screen. Bone vs. soft tissue.
- Diagnostic musculoskeletal ultrasound — every relevant ligament and tendon. We see what’s torn, healed, or inflamed in real time.
- Full biomechanical evaluation — barefoot, in your shoes, during gait. The mechanics driving the problem above the foot.
- Orthopedic taping as a same-day diagnostic. Modest relief predicts a strong response to a custom orthotic. (Taping is diagnostic, not treatment — it is short-lived and designed that way.)
- Honest spoken-out-loud assessment. What’s wrong, what’s not wrong, what we’d recommend, and what surgery (if any) is genuinely on the table.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I tell shin splints apart from a tibial stress fracture?
Diagnostic ultrasound and, in some cases, X-ray. Shin splints produce diffuse, mid-shin tenderness; stress fractures produce a sharply localized “I can put my finger on the exact spot” pain. We rule out a stress fracture at your first visit so you know what you’re actually dealing with.
My ankle sprain happened weeks ago. Is it too late to do anything about it?
Almost certainly not. The first two weeks after a sprain are the cleanest window, but we routinely treat sprains that didn’t heal properly months or even years ago. The treatment changes — we’re now restoring ligament integrity rather than guiding fresh healing — but the outcome is still typically full resolution.
An Austin surgeon told me I need a Brostrom procedure. Is that real?
The Brostrom procedure (and modified Brostrom) is a real and reasonable operation for a specific patient. The problem is that it is recommended far more often than it is genuinely necessary. We can usually tell at the first visit — using ultrasound and an orthopedic taping diagnostic — whether your instability is ligament-driven or mechanically driven. The large majority are mechanical, and those patients do not need the surgery.
I keep rolling my ankle on uneven ground and I’m worried about falling. Is this normal for my age?
It is common, but it is not “normal,” and it is not something you have to accept. Chronic ankle instability is the leading mechanical contributor to falls in adults over sixty. It is also one of the most treatable. Most patients we see in this category are walking confidently on gravel, grass, and stairs within four to six weeks of starting a proper protocol.
Will I need to stop my activities while we’re treating this?
Almost never completely. We work with you to keep you moving — even if that means modifying the activity for a few weeks. Sitting on the couch for two months is rarely the right answer, and for our older patients, it actively makes things worse.
Are custom orthotics really different from a high-end retail insert?
Yes — and the difference is the most important reason that retail inserts so often fail. Retail inserts (including the higher-end brands) are taken from a weight-bearing mold of a foot that is already collapsing into the position that causes the pain. They are engineered to support you in your problem. Our orthotics are taken non-weight-bearing, capturing the foot in its corrected position. They are engineered to fix the problem.
Do you accept Medicare and insurance?
Yes. We accept Medicare and most major insurance plans. Our team is happy to verify your benefits before your first appointment — just call (830) 265-6000.