Plantar Fasciitis: Foot Pain Explained

If you’ve ever suffered with foot pain, you’ll understand the hardship and discomfort that comes along with it. The stabbing sensation under your heel when you touch the ground getting out of bed in the morning. The first few minutes of walking, hopping around until your foot “warms up”. Injuries to the foot are becoming more and more common, with people looking to things like insoles, footwear, and over the counter medications like anti inflammatories to help alleviate symptoms. This article will help you understand the root causes, and allow you to develop a strategy that will bring long term relief.

What is The Plantar Fascia?

The Plantar Fascia is a sheath of connective tissue running underneath the whole foot. This area of the fascial network is well known due to the name of the syndrome associated with pain there, but it’s important to know that the fascial web is one continuous sheath that covers absolutely everything in the body, not just the foot. For more info regarding fascia itself, take a look at this related article from our blog library (insert MFR link).

This sheath houses lots of muscles, tendons, nerves and blood vessels and plays a huge role in the body. Our feet our the first contact point we have with the earth. They act like shock absorbers when moving, give the rest of our body information about our environment and also contain most of the bodies proprioceptors. These areas of proprioception give our brain crucial info about where our bodies are in space in order to maintain balance and move correctly.

What Causes Pain in The Plantar Fascia?

Dehydration: When it comes to pain in the muscle and fascial system, dehydration is not something that is not generally considered as a root cause, but let’s explore the concept of hydration and our tissues for a moment. It is assumed by many that hydrating ourselves is as simple as drinking more water, and while this is a good start, for that water to reach or tissues, our body must be ready to accept it.

Let’s take a sponge as an example, it’s what we call hydrophilic, meaning that it attracts water. A dry sponge has a huge capacity to pull water into itself and expand. The soft tissue made up of muscles and fascia in our body is the same, and has an ability to pull water in when the conditions are right. The opposite is something that we call a hydrophobic material. It repels water. Imagine a melon submerged in water, the skin is hydrophobic and won’t allow the water to penetrate the melon.

If our fascia becomes dehydrated because our body is acting more hydrophobic that hydrophilic, these adhesions can become very painful. Typically what therapists and message therapists will call “knots”, these painful lumpy areas are essentially dehydrated areas of the muscle and fascia. This process of localized dehydration is not limited to the foot but the plantar fascia can become particularly vulnerable due to the fact that the soles of our feet don’t have lots of muscle.

Poor Movement: As we age, we all naturally begin to dehydrate but moving poorly can accelerate the process and make it difficult for our bodies to absorb the water we drink. . When we move with asymmetry and imbalance, our bodies compensate and often create these areas of dehydration as an attempt to stabilize areas of the body that have become unstable. This “bad tension” is a result of a lack of “good tension” that is necessary in order to keep our structure well integrated and moving correctly.

While the solution provided for this “bad tension” or “tightness” is usually something involving stretching, it’s not less tension we need but actually more tension in the right areas. We are sold the idea that the world faces a flexibility epidemic due to so many of us feeling tight or restricted. However, it is really a lack of proper tension that prompts this reaction from our bodies.

Kicking Foot Pain For Good

There are a few things we can do to get a handle on plantar fasciitis and kick foot pain for good.

Proper Assessment: Getting a proper assessment of our posture and gait is a hugely important first step in order to better understand the root structural issues that may be causing foot pain. As mentioned above, we need well distributed good tension in order to support our body as we move. Assessing posture and gait can give us crucial information in terms of where our body is lacking that good tension, where we may have areas of instability, and why our foot has become problematic.

Self Myofascial Release: MFR or self message of the foot itself and associated muscles like the calves and hamstrings is the next step. While this does not automatically help our bodies restore better tension, it can help break up areas of dehydration that may have become painful, and open up better integration when it comes time to exercise. This can be done quite simply using tools like a lacrosse ball under the feet, or a foam roller under the calves. Technique here is important. For more info check out our blog titled “What is Self Myofascial Release” in our library.

Functional Patterns Training: At Functional Patterns we train in a way that allows us to correct imbalances, rehydrate our tissues, and improve strength, flexibility and stability all at once. We use integrated exercise techniques that help restore our bodies good tension and take the pressure of areas of the body that have become problematic. We do this by focusing on the whole body and a systems rather than symptoms approach.

Conclusion

Plantar Fasciitis is a real pain and many people can suffer with it for a long time without any meaningful change. Areas of our body dehydrate and become painful due to poor movement and the plantar fascia is no different. A through assessment is needed to understand the underlying structural issues that are causing it, and exercise needs to be carefully done to improve our bodies ability to distribute good tension in order to support our structure. Quick fixes like icing and insoles won’t be enough to make meaningful changes, but at Functional Patterns we remove the guesswork and give you a real solution. If this article has peaked your interest or you need help, get in touch with us today.