Hey everybody it’s Dr. Zach Beatty with Gonstead Family Chiropractic. Today we’re going to need a couple of props. These are two golf balls and you’re probably wondering what is a chiropractor doing with two golf balls, well, we’re not going to be playing golf today. What we’re going to be talking about is plantar fasciitis. It is a very common diagnosis. Especially nowadays we’re hearing it a lot more than we used to. The reason that we have this is not what a lot of people think. What we have going on within our foot is an arch that should arch upwards. When we step, it starts to put pressure on it and some people’s will go in which puts pressure on their foot and also their knee. We want to talk about that. So the reason that we’re going to talk about it is because we see it all the time in our office.
Plantar fasciitis in short is basically where the arch starts in an up position and then it flattens out. When it flattens out, think of your hand demonstrating it as curved up versus flat, then it starts to pull and stretch. What it will do is start to pull and stretch underneath your foot and start to pull on your heel which causes a heel spur. We see and hear about that, it’s a very common term. That heel spur becomes very painful but so does that stretching. That stretching pulls tendons, ligaments, and muscles and then people start to get tight calves, tight Achilles tendons and things like that. We want to be really conscious of what are we doing to our feet and why our feet are going from an arch to flat.
Inserts are huge so make sure you guys have proper inserts. There’s a couple companies that I think are good and have a really good price point versus I see a lot of people paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars for these inserts. I’ll be honest I don’t know if they’re any better and that is my own take on it.
Let’s get into the exercise where we’re going to take two golf balls, place them underneath your foot, and then roll them around. The reason I have two is because I have two feet. You want to focus on keeping it right under the arch. There’s a bone right here that’s called a navicular bone that will help keep your arch up to keep you healthy and keep you running strong. I hope this helps you guys if you have any questions on it please feel free to reach out to us. Can’t wait to see you guys soon take care.