What is Plantar Fasciitis?
Plantar Fasciitis occurs when the tissue on the bottom of the foot becomes irritated and causes acute or chronic pain in the heel or on the bottom of the food.
What are the symptoms of Plantar Fasciitis?
At the bottom of your foot, there is a ligament called the Plantar Fascia that attaches at the heel and the front of the foot. When the Plantar Fascia is irritated, it can cause pain in the heel and/or on the bottom of the foot.
Plantar Fasciitis symptoms include:
- –heel pain in the morning upon waking up.
- –constant pain in the foot, anywhere from the heel to the fore front of the foot
- –foot or heel pain after walking for extended periods of time
- –foot pain or heel pain after standing for extended periods of time
- –foot pain or heel pain after running for long distances.
What causes Plantar Fasciitis?
Usually, there’s a repetitive issue that is triggering the plantar fasciitis. It can be caused by repeated strain, either from tight musculature somewhere in the hips or legs or faulty body mechanics from as high up as the hip or trunk.
Plantar Fasciitis Treatment
In a traditional medical setting, patients are typically advised to wear good foot orthotics, stretch your calves, roll a ball underneath it, ice it, rest it and wear a night splint to see if it gets better. Sometimes, for an initial plantar fasciitis injury, this is sufficient to relieve the symptoms.
However, it’s important to understand that this is a repetitive issue that’s being caused by an imbalance of the muscles that affect how the foot lands when walking or running. This includes muscles all the way up into the hip, pelvis and trunk. It’s important to address the whole body alignment when treating plantar fasciitis, to prevent the condition from becoming chronic. If you don’t treat the whole system, it’s very likely the plantar fasciitis will come back.
At Rebalance, we go beyond just treating the foot and calves. We look at the musculature of the legs, hip, pelvis and trunk to assess how the muscles are moving and functioning. We treat every muscle that is contributing to the plantar fasciitis. This helps to improve alignment. Once the body is properly aligned, then we focus on stretching and strengthening the muscles as well as the joints and soft tissue.
Some of the treatment methods we might use to treat plantar fasciitis include:
