Plantar Fasciitis Symptoms
I personally tore my left foot's plantar fascia from a gymnastics injury. My right foot developed it slowly from limping around for nearly three years. I have a good idea as to how plantar fasciitis develops and there are differences in having a chronic case or a traumatic injury case. Both seem to usually respond well to the same treatment methods. Read below to see where you fit in. Most people that are not athletic (or had a traumatic injury to the heel) will have the "chronic onset" form of plantar fasciitis.
Chronic Onset:
Usually caused from sitting down all day, causing the body to adapt to that position, which causes the pelvis to shift anteriorly, femur internally rotates, knees collapse inward, causing the foot's arch to collapse. This set up is just asking for plantar fasciitis. DO NOT SIT IN A CHAIR FOR LONG!!! Get up and walk around often!! Also, sitting causes the hamstrings to tighten and become dysfunctional from adapting to the sitting position, which makes the calves tight (they share the same myofascial kinetic chain, click here to learn more), which causes excess stress to the plantar fascia. Tight hamstrings mean added tension to the plantar fascia. Wearing shoes causes plantar fasciitis because it makes the foot musculature weak. When the muscles cannot support your body weight, then the plantar fascia takes the grunt work and cannot handle the stress and responds with degeneration (more on this by clicking here). Inflammation is not technically present in the plantar fascia in chronic cases. Inflammation is in the surrounding tissues around the plantar fascia. These inflamed tissues cause hypersensitivity to pain signals in the nerve fibers around the plantar fascia. What is going on in the actual plantar fascia itself is degeneration. The plantar fascia has given up on healing and is eating itself up so to speak. Can also be caused by lack of circulation due to a muscle that moves the big toe becoming dysfunctional due to being inside a shoe. The muscle cannot do its job and can cause nerve entrapment and blood flow restrictions. Less blood flow equals less muscle strength and endurance and causes more stress to the plantar fascia due to the plantar fascia taking up more "grunt work" that the muscles are unable to do. Trigger points can be caused by many things and can mimic plantar fasciitis. If you have plantar fasciitis, on the other hand, you will have trigger points no matter what. |
Severe Injury Onset:
Excessive running on hard surfaces with bad shoes, being overweight, having bad posture and body mechanics and many other factors can make it more likely that you will tear your plantar fascia after trauma to the heel. Minutes after a traumatic injury to the plantar fascia, trigger points develop in the muscles around the heel. At first these are good, and you should rest while you have these trigger points. After a couple weeks, these need to be released. The plantar fascia can heal if you rest it after a traumatic injury, but you want to be sure to try your best to avoid the plantar fascia from going into "chronic degeneration mode". After the injury is fixed in the plantar fascia, you need to fix the dysfunctional soft tissues around the heel (more of this in my book). You can recover from this injury if you rest and slowly go back into your activities. If you push through the pain and limp around, it will get worse extremely fast and turn into a chronic case of plantar fasciitis. You want to avoid this. This can ruin a couple months to years of your life, and you will regret not resting when you had the chance. You can use a walking boot, but not for long (they cause lack of circulation which causes oxidative stress and atrophy of the lower extremity). If you have a full rupture or a big tear, you may need to see an orthopedist. If not, just follow the usual treatment as outlined in my book or on the many articles in this website. |
Keep this in mind:
There is a difference in treatment between these two. Chronic onset plantar fasciitis needs a new inflammatory response to kick start the healing process again and to stop the degeneration. This is done with transverse friction massage/graston/eswt or the treatment outlined in my book. When you try to treat a severe injury caused by trauma to the plantar fascia, you need to focus less on the degeneration, and more on the healing aspect, such as rest/systemic enzymes/taping and so on.
There is a difference in treatment between these two. Chronic onset plantar fasciitis needs a new inflammatory response to kick start the healing process again and to stop the degeneration. This is done with transverse friction massage/graston/eswt or the treatment outlined in my book. When you try to treat a severe injury caused by trauma to the plantar fascia, you need to focus less on the degeneration, and more on the healing aspect, such as rest/systemic enzymes/taping and so on.