Most people don’t realize that there are nerves in the bottom of your foot that can cause plantar fasciitis. So what’s up with that? How does this become an issue? How can you fix it?
Plantar Fasciitis from Irritated Nerves
All pain is experienced through the nerves. Damage to bodily tissues, such as muscles, tendons, ligaments or the capsules around joints, causes nociceptive pain which is a fancy term that describes how our nerves signal irritation and the treat of danger to our brain. So we can have pain and no tissue damage and we can have tissue damage and no pain – I know it’s tricky but hear me out.
The Patient Pinball of Pain
Most plantar fasciitis occurs after the tissues in the bottom of your foot get overused, so your body sends a protective pain signal to your brain letting you know to calm things down. Since we have to use our feet to walk, we just continue to re-irritate the nerves down there and your foot pain becomes a painful loop.
The Nerve Roadmap
Here’s the main culprits causing your pain. The Medial and Lateral Plantar Nerves that come off the Medial Calcanal Nerve. The good news is that this issue is easily treated with a gentle regenerative injection therapy, called Prolotherapy.
Both of these nerves start at the Ankle (by your Achilles’ tendon) and run down the bottom and sides of your foot. So if you have pain anywhere on your foot, that pain signal is coming directly from this nerve, to your spinal cord and then to your brain to get processed.
Don’t just use a destructive bandaid
The problem is most people just put bandaids that are ultimately destructive on their Plantar Fasciitis.
Shoe Inserts: Most people that come to my clinic in Tampa, FL have already tried the usually things: going to the foot doctor multiple times, spending ~$500 on shoe inserts and ugly sandal as that are supposed to help. In the long term these inserts change the biomechanics of your foot and make the intrisic foot muscles weak, leading to more pain down the road.
Cortisone Injections: These injections hurt and are at best helpful 2 months. Long term cortisone literally eats up your tendons and ligaments making them weaker, which leads to more pain. Numerous the studies of cortisone show that the 1 year outcomes cause more pain in ~70% of patients.
Plantar Surgery: The thing about most surgeries is that once you cut a tissue open, nothing is every the same again. A recent study confirmed hat plantar surgery is not effective for most patients, especially if you’ve already had cortisone injections. Here’s a quote from the paper, “The authors also found worse outcomes with preoperative steroid injections, A prolonged recovery period and generally poor outcomes leads the authors to suggest that open plantar fascia release is of questionable clinical value and that patients may improve in the natural course of the disease, in spite of surgery.:
Regenerative Prolotherapy / Prolozone techniques to the rescue!
The good news is we can FIX THE CAUSE! By directly treating this nerve and the surrounding tissues with an all natural regenerative injection called Prolozone Therapy we can: calm down the nerves, calm down the plantar fascia, and strengthen the tendons and ligaments of the foot so your plantar fasciitis goes away!
