Depends on the cause of the pain – I’d suggest seeing your GP as first point of call. I had a few years of terrible foot pain caused by a Morton Neuroma which I had surgery to remove last October – I then over did it running in December and sprained it and that just required trying to rest it as best as I could… So yeah, I’ve had two types of pain in the ball of my foot and they required different things to fix so go see your GP 😉