- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp, Physical Therapist.
- And I'm Brad Heineck, Physical Therapist.
- And together we are the most famous Physical Therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Brad, I thought we'd talk today about top three signs
whether or not your foot pain is actually Planter Fasciitis.
- Right.
- And it's a pretty easy one to diagnosis in most cases
but if you're having pain on the bottom of your foot,
these are the things you want to look for.
- Right. It's a relatively common
- Very common thing.
- Diagnosis. I've had it, you've had it.
- Yeah. - I bet you most people have.
- Especially if you participate in high impact sports
like running or jumping or dancing or ballerina.
- Ballerina. - Yeah.
- Okay. Just very quickly here, we want to do a visual.
Let's show this one first.
- Sure. Here, we've got a really nice diagram of the foot
and have removed the skin off the bottom of the foot
so you can see...
- All this white stuff is the fascia.
That's a tough fibrous band.
- [Brad] And it goes from the heel all the way up
to the toes.
- And so we tried to recreate that using some tape here.
Now we didn't hit all the strips, but you can see
it often starts down in this area and goes up in the toe.
Here it actually forms a band together, I think.
- [Brad] Right.
- [Bob] So the first thing, and you can see
if I put stretch on this, you can see
how that's stretching this band.
- [Brad] Right.
- [Bob] So if you actually get a tear in there,
you can see why that's going to hurt
every time I step on the foot.
- [Brad] Right.
The other thing that happens, is when you bear weight
to the foot, even if the toe doesn't go up,
the foot, what we call, splays out
and it just stretches that naturally.
That's why, well, we'll get into the symptoms
about getting out bed in the morning, why that hurts.
- [Brad] Yeah. And actually a lot of people
who have somewhat flat feet are more prone to this
and actually people with high arches
can be more prone to this.
- [Brad] Sure.
- [Bob] So, all right, let's start off.
Number one, the number one sign
that it may be Planter Fasciitis
is quite often the pain is right here.
Right at the the base of the heel on the front of the heel.
- [Brad] Right, I can't tell you how many people
I'll push around there on their heel, on a patient
and I'll get right in here
and I'll push in there and it'll make them jump
and they say, "Stop that."
- [Bob] If they give you a cortisone shot,
that's usually the place they're going to give it to you.
So, that's number one.
Number two, it tends to follow a pain pattern.
And what is the first thing
that people always say on this, Brad?
- [Brad] When they get out of bed in the morning
and they initially put weight on it, "Oh, it's painful."
- [Bob] Yeah. It really hurts.
And that's why a lot of times we have people
when they first get out of bed, try to put some shoes on
at least that helps blunt the pain a little bit.
- Sure.
- But the other thing is, that pain, after a while
tends to feel a little bit better.
- Right. After you walk around for the next 10, 15 minutes.
- But then as you walk more and more
it starts to get worse again.
- Throughout the day.
So, and this can also happen
after you've been sitting for a long time, Brad.
If you sit for a long time, you think,
"Oh, it doesn't hurt anymore."
Then you step on it, "Ow, ow, ow."
It comes back again.
So that's that pain pattern.
It's going to be worse a lot of times when you're
putting more pressure on this band, like on stairs
or if you raise on your toes or something like that,
which all makes sense.
So, that's the basic pain pattern.
That's number two, which makes you think
it might be Planter Fasciitis.
The third one is just something I've noticed on people.
As you can see, these bands extend all the way up
into the toes.
And one thing I've noticed, and I saw it on me first,
is that people who have Planter Fasciitis,
you can compare your two sides.
If you have it on just one side,
see how far your toe bends up.
- You mean, one foot or one side of the foot?
- One foot. - Right.
- Yeah. If you have it on just one foot.
- You're going to compare the right foot to the left foot
or vise versa.
- Right, correct.
So, let's say I have it in my left foot, which is this one.
I'll pull up on this toe here
and it won't stretch as far as the other side.
I've seen that quite often.
- And will it be painful?
- And it'll be painful when we pull it up.
And when I first noticed this, Brad,
is when I was doing lunges.
I was doing lunges and when you do lunges,
you put a lot of pressure on the big toe
and I was getting Planter Fasciitis from that.
- Sure.
- And I was like, what's going on here?
Why am I getting Planter Fasciitis from doing lunges?
And it was that big toe.
I stretched it out gently over time
and I stopped getting Planter Fasciitis.
The other thing that you'll find as a runner
is that when your shoes start to wear out
I start getting more stress on the Planter Fasciitis
and on the fascia.
And to me, especially when I'm getting it in both feet,
that means the shoes are wearing out
and it's time to start getting a new pair of shoes.
So those are the three signs.
Number one, pain right here.
Number two, how you feel the pain.
Quite often when you stand up...
- Getting out of bed.
- And then number three, you're going to have that tight toe
that doesn't extend back like it should.
I'll put some links down below in the description
of some of the treatments we have.
But one of the treatments we have is stretching those toes.
- Sure. Yep.
Yeah. We've got a great video on all the treatments
that you can do that we haven't discussed with this
but continue to watch our videos
and you'll get more and more information
that's going to keep you healthy, fit, active...
- And pain free. - Pain free.
- All right, let's do it. - Oh.
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