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This article is a transcribed edited summary of a video Bob and Brad recorded in October of 2018. For the original video go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM7N-QPnK90&feature=youtu.be
Bob: How to fix plantar fasciitis in seconds and this does work. There is a study that showed that if you can do stretches on your foot then you can have an 83% cure rate. It may take you a month or two, but we’re also going to show you some other things that might make that go a lot faster.
Brad: Right. Plantar fasciitis, it can drag on for a long time.
Bob: Oh, it can go on for a year or year and a half. There’s no doubt.
Brad: Right.
Bob: We realize people don’t have time for pain, I mean, who does? Maybe you, do you have time in your day for pain Brad?
Brad: I like it, Bob. Just kidding!
Bob: I had a girl in my class who liked pain. The thing about plantar fasciitis, you should probably know what it is. This is generally a type of heel pain. Generally, the pain is right there.
Bob: That’s often where you feel it. You might feel it all over the foot, but this is where it's really bad. The plantar fascia, plantar means bottom, and fascia is a tough, thick, fibrous material and it extends along starting from the heel and going up into the toes. It’s important that you understand that because then you’ll understand why we want you to do these certain stretches.
Brad: And Bob, that’s important but what’s connected to the heel directly is the Achilles tendon connects to the calf muscles so, we also want to address the calf muscle group and tendon along with the foot. But we’ll get into that as we go on.
Bob: And what I just saw in a study on that is that in people who have plantar fasciitis, the Achilles tendon and calf muscle tend to be tight. Which makes sense because if that’s tight, you’re going to put more stress on the foot. It’s all biomechanical. It all makes sense.
Brad: Right, it all fits together.
Bob: So, let’s start with the first one. You’re going to want to stretch that band and a good time to do it is right away when you wake up in the morning. I imagine many of you have that thing that happens as soon as you get up in the morning, you put weight on the foot and it really hurts. It’s one of the worst times.
Brad: Yeah, you kind of limp when you walk for a while and that’s a classic symptom.
Bob: Because all night long that was starting to heal and tighten up on you and then in the morning you give it that instant stretch and you break it open again. So, what you want to do is just wake up and you go ahead without standing on it, without putting any weight on it, you’re going to gently grab all the toes. You’re going to get all the toes and pull them back towards you. This is the stretch you want to do. Just pressure on pressure off or you can do continuous stretches too.
Brad: You know, up to 30 seconds.
Bob: Yeah, it doesn’t take long. 30 seconds and then before you get out of bed, you’re going to put your shoes on. It takes some of the stress off. Now, this is the stretch throughout the day. I mean, this is the stretch you’re going to do every hour if you can, and this is what’s going to help you get by and get through this thing. So, you can also do it in a chair which Brad is going to demonstrate, and you can do it with your shoe on.
Brad: If you’re at work, this chair is a little low, but it will work on a taller chair that you have at your desk. With your shoe on, you’re going to do this, you’re going to make sure your ankle is dorsiflexed or this way to help tighten things up and it works nice if you have a chair that has wheels on it because you can roll into it like this and get that stretch.
Bob: You get that great toe extension again right, Brad? You’re getting that toe extended.
Brad: Right, and that’s the big toe. So, if you want to do it on the other foot for a little preventative maintenance, you know, it could be that both are sore, but you can do that as well.
Bob: You could also grab the foot and pull back like we did lying down.
Brad: Depending on what kind of shoe you have, if you have a hard leather shoe or a thick sole shoe then you may have to take the shoe off and work it that way. So, be aware of what you’re wearing.
Bob: Generally, I think people agree that when you have plantar fasciitis, if you sit for a while and then you get up, again you get that pain. So, that’s why before you get up, you should make sure you do the stretch. Brad is going to show what we talked about is how the Achilles tendon and the calf muscle gastric soleus, they all attach into that heel and it’s all one big unit, so we must make sure you do this stretch also. He’s going to do it with the knee straight.
Brad: One leg is straight, and the other leg is not involved. We’re working on that back leg only.
Bob: You can do it with it bent also. It’s tougher that way, you can see his heel come up.
Brad: It gets a different muscle. You get the soleus that way. This way you're more complete. And notice my toes, I don’t have them out to the side. You want to straighten it forward and that gets the muscles that you want more effectively. If you happen to have an incline board, this is the deluxe way to stretch it. It’s more comfortable, it’s easier and as soon as you get on, you’ll know. You don’t have to. You can do it on the floor, but some people have these.
Bob: We did a video where he demonstrated how to make one of those. Brad’s a handy guy.
Brad: I mean, you can buy these, and we have them on our favorite products list, but you know, if you’re handy and you want to make one, we have a video on how to make one and quite cheaply if you have a few scrap pieces of wood and screws around.
Bob: All right, coming back to me, take the attention off him for a little bit. So, now I’m going to go to the other foot. You can do a splaying massage, and this can be quite effective. So again, you have the thick band here and I have my two thumbs and I’m going to pull them apart with pressure on them. So, I’m going to that and I’m just going to splay, that’s what it’s called. I’m pulling them apart, oh boy, you really feel that.
Brad: Oh yeah.
Bob: That’s something you may have to start off working up more toward the toes, you may not even be able to tolerate it down by the heel where it’s sore or you may have to do it very light in this area to start off with, but again you can do this quickly, 20 or 30 seconds, whenever you have time.
Brad: If you’re lucky you might have somebody at home, maybe a brother, sister, or spouse, maybe they’ll do this for you.
Bob: Yeah, my brother is not touching my feet, I can tell you that.
Brad: Get your wife to do it
Bob: That’s not happening. It’s sad because I did hers when she had plantar fasciitis.
Brad: Oh, really?
Bob: Yeah, and she kind of yelled at me because she’s like “I’ve been suffering with this for months and now you do this splaying massage, and it helps. Why didn’t you do it right away.” There’s no appeasing some people. Anyway, you can do that and the other thing you can do is an ice massage.
Brad: Yep, so you can take a Dixie cup or Styrofoam cup and fill it up with water, almost to the top, maybe a half inch from the top and put it in the freezer overnight and then break away the sides of it until you get to the ice. Now if you leave this in the freezer too long, it’s amazing. The ice evaporates and that’s what happened.
Bob: Yeah, it’s amazing because that thing was full.
Brad: Anyways, it’s kind of a nice science experiment if you have children to show that ice does evaporate. There we go, you want to put that on your foot, Bob?
Bob: Well, usually what I do is I take my palm first and warm it up a little bit and smooth it out.
Brad: Warm the ice up.
Bob: Well, I mean, what happens is you have rough edges.
Brad: Yeah, I know.
Bob: Then you take it and it’s a nice fast thing. You can cool the inflammation down and in 30 seconds, it starts to feel numb already.
Brad: This will wake you up too.
Bob: Yeah, I was feeling a little sleepy but now I’m awake. Okay, now we’re going to show you one bonus thing. We have a new product, the pro-stretched night sock. We just got this sent to us and it’s funny, Brad and I have tried a lot of these or maybe I don’t know what you have but I’ve tried a number of these. This seems to have solved a lot of the problems that these socks have, or these splints have. What the idea is, throughout the night everything tightens up on you, especially if your foot goes down all night long. So, the socks put a little stretch on the foot all night long but a little bit because if you put too much it keeps you awake. So, this comes with two components. It comes with a strap up on the calf and it has a loop. By the way, they were careful making the parts of this, so they don’t get caught into the blankets very easy, they tried to design it that way. They also took into consideration that a lot of those splints were bulky and hot, and this is supposed to solve all those problems by not being bulky or hot.
Brad: And you can walk with it if you need to get up in the middle of the night to take care of business.
Bob: Yes, good point. The only thing is these straps are sticky. I slide it on, and it’s got a plastic piece in here.
Brad: It’s to keep all the toes coming up together for a complete stretch.
Bob: Yeah, otherwise it would pull just more on the big toe, but you can pull it out if you don’t like the feel of it but otherwise it pulls all the toes up equally. You strap it around the ankle here too, so it helps the sock from sliding down. Then a strap comes up and goes through the loop.
Brad: Now, I like this a lot better than a lot of other night splints. Some of them are molded plastic around the back and people say they’re not comfortable and they get in the way and it’s hard to sleep with them.
Bob: One of the ones I just saw, Brad, the strap went from the toes to the ankle, and I don’t know if you remember that, but it wouldn’t hold very well. And this one, it gives you quite the angle and it works well. They recommend for the first night, bring it up to neutral. Don’t put a stretch on it. My wife wore them for a while, and it did work for her very well and she would wake up in the middle of the night and be loosening it up. You may still run into that but maybe start a couple nights in neutral.
Brad: And neutral means the ankle is at a 90-degree angle.
Bob: Yeah. Then maybe the second or third night you can start putting more pressure on it and each night just keep putting a little more pressure on it. I really am impressed with this because it’s not bulky in bed and you’re not going to kick your partner in bed with a big splint and it’s a breathable material so it’s not that hot and plus you don’t have a sock going all the way to your chin. It seems like they’ve solved the problems and I’d like to have a patient to try it on because I don’t know if there’s downsides that I’m not seeing.
Brad: Right.
Bob: So, give the stretches a try and get rid of that plantar fasciitis. Thanks.
To learn more about ProStretch Nightsock for Plantar Fasciitis visit: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H3BPPY6?ref=exp_physicaltherapyvideo_dp_vv_d
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