5 Essential Elements For rolling a tennis ball under your foot
You have painful plantar fasciitis, then you are probably looking a for easy and quick resolution to your pain. NOW! You think your alone with this one. More than 2,700,000 searches per month of people just like you looking for answers! You are probably not worried about the how's, why and what for's but are looking for plain and simple answer and techniques to get rid of your pain. This is the most common cause of foot problems in western society. This condition is a condition due to an inflammation of the flat band of tissue called the plantar fascia. Its function is to support the arch of your foot when walking. Most people describe the pain like a sharp, burning or stabbing sensation that starts at the heel and tends to spread forward into the arch of the foot. Lots of people are looking for answers, treatment and quick results. This condition is agonizingly painful, frustrating and life draining and will get worse without treatment.
Causes
The first step in order to receive the correct plantar fasciitis pain treatment is to figure out the cause of the condition. Many different factors cause plantar fasciitis, such as, tight calf muscles, injury from jumping and running, arthritis both systemic and degenerative, poorly fitting shoes, systemic disease, poor body posture when running and walking, poor foot posture and foot biomechanics, history of lower back injury and history of lower limb surgery.
Plantar Fasciitis Treatment
Your Podiatrist can help you diagnose your condition and then outline a plan of action to treat it. After your diagnosis has occurred and prognosis determined, your Podiatrist will advise you on the best pain therapy. Most of the time, plantar fasciitis therapy can be done in your own home with exercise, relaxation and rest. There are some plantar fasciitis secrets that only a few practitioners know about and sometimes you may have to search far and wide to find a great Podiatrist who can help you with this. Staying off your feet for a given amount of time and rest from weight bearing activities is recommended. Other times, your Podiatrist may tell you to apply tape to the bottom of your feet to help support your arches and reduce tension off your plantar fascia. Typically this is located at the heel and just anterior to the insertion of the plantar fascia into the heel bone. This reduces swelling and inflammation o allow the healing process to respond more quickly.
Strengthening and foot flexibility exercises are integral and another treatment used to firstly help with reduction of inflammation and pain reduction and then looking at preventing the condition from returning. The use and application ice to the area of inflammation for 10 minutes on and 20 minutes off, usually in the middle of the day and at the end of the day. This procedure helps to reduce pain and oedema which also speeds up the healing process.
Plantar fasciitis is an inflammatory condition that affects the long supporting structures of the plantar (bottom) surface of the feet. The plantar fascia structure is designed to support the arch of the foot during weight bearing and redistribute forces during walking, running. It is also a connecting structure that links and helps chain together the fascia's of the lower leg, thigh, pelvis and lower back regions. Diagnosis is best achieved by clinical assessment and palpation (touch) of the arch and bottom of the heel region. Pain will usually present with weight bearing and is relieved with rest. Often symptoms are worse in the morning with pain being intense and sharp in nature and begin to ease as you start to walk. Symptom often return towards the end of the day as the body begins to become fatigued and energy levels decrease. The challenges with plantar fasciitis is that as we need to bear and walk weight on our feet, it takes longer for the feet to heal than if we had injured a arm or hand.
Injury to this area can have a major affect on muscle groups of the lower extremity and in particular the lower back and pelvis. When these structures become involved it is often difficult to diagnose which came first the injury to the plantar fascia itself or the lower back. Did a weakness develop in the fascia and core of the pelvis that produced a gradual weakness in the plantar fascial structures of your feet. An open looped question that could never be answered.
So where to from here?
It's imperative that proper diagnosis includes a full body postural assessment. Why for a foot problem you ask? Often successful treatment will involve different modalities that treat at different levels of the posture.
Assessment is concerned with how the alignment of the fore foot, rear foot, ankle and lower leg all interact with each other. Any abnormalities, muscle compartment dysfunction and structural mis-alignments must be noted and addressed if possible. Structural conditions such as tibial varum and valgum are often bone development problems and can only be and should be rectified via surgery (only in extreme cases). A physiotherapist and chiropractor or musculo-skeletal therapist will be concerned at pelvic posture, core stability and the functioning of the sacro-iliac joints. All practitioners should be acutely aware of changes in pelvic posture with respect to the anterior superior iliac spines (ASIS). Inferior tilting in the frontal plane (looking front on at the body) may indicate a leg length discrepancy or short leg.
Short leg can cause significant changes ion gait and muscle function. Leg length discrepancy can either be classified as Structural or functional. Functional leg length problems arise due to changes in body posture and muscle adaption to these changes that pull either one leg shorter or cause the other leg to appear longer. Structural leg length discrepancy is due t bone deformity or actual shorter bones. These can be due to short tibia and here fibula, short femur (thigh bone) or even changes and dysplasia of the hip joint and acetabulum. Correction and proper assessment of these postural and structural problems is essential to obtaining a quick and easy resolution to your plantar fasciitis.
Other times, your Podiatrist may tell you to apply tape to the bottom of your feet to help support your arches and reduce tension off your plantar fascia. Plantar fasciitis is an inflammatory condition that affects the long supporting structures of the plantar (bottom) surface of the feet. The plantar fascia structure is designed to support the arch of the foot during weight bearing and redistribute forces during walking, running. The challenges with plantar fasciitis is that as we need to walk and bear weight on our feet, it takes longer for the feet to heal than if we had injured a arm or hand.
Assessment is concerned with how the alignment of the fore foot, rear foot, ankle and lower leg all interact with each other.