PLANTAR FASCIITIS AND ACHILLES TENDONITIS

 

 

If you have been told you have plantar fasciitis or Achilles tendonitis, and that there is nothing that can be done, you have been misinformed.  

 

Achilles tendonitis and plantar fasciitis are two conditions that I particularly like treating.  They have similar causes of injury and similar treatments. This is why I have grouped them together.

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• It is challenging to treat feet and ankles because we constantly walk on them.  

• They are “weight bearing” and the weight of each step causes further damage.  

• As a result, these conditions require extensive treatment for complete healing. 

 

Many of my patients are quite surprised to find there is a treatment for their plantar fasciitis or Achilles tendonitis. 

 

They also are quite pleased when their pain is gone.

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In my early 30s I developed Achilles tendonitis.  Since it is weight bearing, it didn't heal as other injuries did.  I tried a few therapies, but a number of months went by without any healing.  I had a couple of chiropractors work on my ankle, but the treatments were very inadequate.  I paid a podiatrist $400 for custom orthotics - talk about a waste of money!  I wore those orthotics for more than a year, which only served to shorten my Achilles tendon. (The orthotics raise the heel a little. If worn all the time the tendon will shorten some which causes new problems.)  I had to abandon my lower body workout routine, and I wasn't any better. 

 

(This was earlier in my career before I treated a lot of sports injuries, so at the time, I didn't have a comprehensive treatment plan.  My subsequent experience with treating my own Achilles tendonitis helped to shape my sports-injury practice.  These individual treatments were talked about in chiropractic school, but learning how to put them together in a comprehensive treatment plan took insight and experience learned on the job.)

 

One day I said to myself, “I fix bodies for a living.  I need to reevaluate what is happening here and fix myself.”  So I did!  What I discovered amazed me.  The first thing I asked myself was “Why do my feet hurt so much in the morning when I get out of bed?”  I thought about it, and I came to realize a few things about how muscle spasms react during sleep.  I realized that my injured calf muscles were contracting and shortening overnight.  (Fortunately injured muscles get stretched out as we use them during the day.  But when we sleep the injured muscles quickly tighten back up.)  As a result, the Achilles tendon was short in the morning.  When I would take my first few steps with this shortened and inflamed tendon, it would hurt and further damage the tendon. 

 

So I designed a homemade sleeping boot that prevented my Achilles tendon from contracting by keeping it the correct lengthened position all night long.  (This boot is shown with other treatments in this chapter.)  At first, I had to take the boot off after an hour because it would ache.  Each night, I could wear the boot for longer periods of time.  As soon as I was able to wear the boot through the entire night, I no longer experienced pain in the morning when I walked on it.

 

This is very important because those early morning painful steps are the most damaging
steps you take all day!