A guide to plantar fasciitis

Your feet are a master piece of engineering, they are flexible structures made of bones, joints, muscles, nerves and soft tissues that let us stand up straight and perform diverse activities like: walking, jumping, and running. Muscles, tendons, nerves and ligaments are all along the surfaces of the feet, allowing the simples movements needed for motion and balance.

Have you ever thought about the quantity of work your feet do every day? All the used and abused that we put our feet trough. And how unimportant your feet seem compared to the rest of your body? We do not think about the amount of weight and pressure that we put on to them with each step we take? Your feet are the foundation of your body, the base on which we are built, but most of us fail to realize how much they do for us every day, and we abuse our feet until we are injured or in pain. Only then we give them the respect that they deserve.

Sadly, foot and ankle problems have increased exponentially over the past years all around the world, and many people are suffering these conditions at a much younger age than past generations, this can only lead us to ask our self’s why?.

One of the most common disorders that we see on the foot is plantar fasciitis. This condition presents itself when a constant stress is placed on the ligament in your foot that supports your arch the "plantar fascia". When that ligament is overused it leads to the weakening of this elastic band and the common symptoms of heel and arch pain which gets worst when you get up to walk after periods of rest. Or at least that is what we have been told.

Plantar fasciitis isn't the kind of pain you experience after being on your feet all day, at work or walking around an amusement park. The pain from plantar fasciitis is often very intense and debilitating, it can literally change your life. It is also amazingly common. It has become accepted as one of the most chronic and, often times, most difficult foot problems to treat, doctors most often than not, follow a traditional treatment that shows no results, and that is because this condition is frequently misunderstood.

Possibly this is because few doctors take an integrative approach to foot problems like plantar fasciitis. In my opinion, most people, including doctors, normally think of the foot as being separate from the rest of the body, they put emphasis on treating only the foot and don't look at the other biological systems or lifestyle and diet factors that go into generating these problems to begin with . This is a big mistake, your foot is attached to the rest of your body. If you want to heal your foot, you need to see your body as whole unit.