Like anyone else who writes about medical or health topics when reporting and commenting on science, I always get responses with anecdotes about what was written with it either does or does not apply to them. Anecdotes and testimonials always turn up in the comments sections. While they may be important to the individual, anecdotes […]
Tag Archives | plantar fasciitis
The Problem with the Treatment of Plantar Fasciitis
Probably a day does not go by in which I read something somewhere about plantar fasciitis and I end up face palming myself and eye rolling. The worst are those that usually start with “The Truth About…“; that usually gets a double face palm that hurts me and the eyes rolling so far that I […]
Intrinsic Muscle Strength in Plantar Fasciitis
Plantar fasciitis is something I have frequently blogged about. Plantar fasciitis is very common. I beleive plantar fasciitis is generally badly managed with a lot of snake oil being touted for it and a lot of one size fits all approaches to treatment from one hit wonders. At any one time, if you had a […]
Running on a track could be associated with a greater risk for heel pain
There is not a lot known about risk of injury from running on different surfaces. Despite claims that softer surfaces are better as there is less impact, the available evidence shows that the injury rates between hard and soft surfaces are the same (I discussed that here). Now we have this new study: The Association […]
Foot Orthotics for Reducing Load in the Plantar Fascia
The generally accepted role of foot orthotics in those with plantar fasciitis is to reduce the load in the plantar fascia so it can get better. To achieve that, the foot orthotic needs to have the right design features that reduce the load in the foot type of the individual. The role is not to […]
Strengthening vs Stretching for Plantar Fasciitis
I previously wrote about the approach that I advocate and use for plantar fasciitis. Primarily its based around the principle of reducing the load in the tissue (short and medium term measures) and increasing the ability of the tissues to take the load (medium and long term measures). In the previous post I wrote in […]
Plantar Fasciitis – how then do you treat it?
After writing a previous post criticizing some rhetoric and propaganda on plantar fasciitis¹, I got a couple of complaints that I did not say how to treat it! I didn’t as that was not the purpose of the article! Plantar fasciitis is so common, that everyone is an expert in it. Self diagnosis and self […]
Kinesio Taping for Foot Posture Problems?
Kinesio taping became all the rage after the TV images of athletes wearing the brightly colored tape on their shoulders and knees for injuries at the 2008 Bejing Olympics. So, of course if Olympic athletes are using it then it must be right and if its a pretty color then it must be even more […]
Prefabricated vs Custom Made Orthotics for Plantar Fasciitis
This perennial issue has come up again with the publication of another study. I have done a previous rant elsewhere on this issue: The Redundancy of Research on Custom Made vs Prefabricated Foot Orthotics. The alleged evidence to date from most studies so far is that there are no differences in outcomes between custom made […]
Is minimalism an option to manage plantar fasciitis?
More and more blog posts and articles are claiming that minimalist running is the best thing for the management of plantar fasciitis, most of which are from minimalist or barefoot runners who have no clinical experience actually treating the condition, yet seem to hold very strong clinical opinions (for example see this self-appointed expert). They […]