Hi there, I'm Lucy MacDonald, physiotherapist. Welcome back to my
virtual clinic. Today I'm going to be talking to you about pain in the sole of
your foot and particularly in healthcare workers, it's often called plantar
fasciitis, but more accurately called plantar fasciopathy, but before I do
I'd like to say thank you so much for your lovely messages of support, I really
appreciate them, please do press the subscribe key and share with as many people as
you can so that everyone can benefit from this advice. So you have pain in the
sole of your foot, what could be causing it? So there are other things other than
the plantar fascia that could be causing your pain in the sole of your foot, so
it's super important that you do see a physiotherapist or a doctor who can give
you a proper diagnosis, things like stress fractures are the types of pains
that you must not miss so please do go and get them checked out before
you follow the advice on this video, but the plantar fascia runs from the heel, so
the calcaneal bone here, all the way down the sole of the foot, so you can see this
is a model of the foot and we flip it over, this is the calcaneus, it starts
here and it runs through the whole of the sole of your foot. Now you can feel it
anywhere but the most common place is around the middle and back of the heel,
so that's where you're feeling your pain what's the first thing that you need to
do? It's probably the most obvious which is to sort out your shoes, now with a
pair of shoes what you need to make sure is that it's nice and flexible at the
big toe joint, that it's got a little bit of a heel, you can see here on my grotty
old favourite trainer that there's a little bit of a heel and then there's a
little bit of support in this part of the shoe. There's also laces or some kind
of strapping over the front of the foot so that the heel bone stays nice and
firm in the shoe and if you can get all those components in the shoe you're
getting it right, and the best and easiest way to do that is just to wear a
decent running shoe that will really support your feet when you're on your
feet all day at work. Right the next thing is what can you do in terms of
exercise? Now loads of people make the mistake of stretching and stretching and
stretching the calf muscle and that could actually make things worse by
making your ankle a bit more unstable which is the
last thing that you want to do, so what should you be doing about it? Well
actually you should be loading the plantar fascia because we know that
the plantar fascia behaves a bit like a tendon, tendons don't like being
stretched they like being loaded, so what you need to do is an exercise that
involves flexing your big toe and then dropping your heels up a step, but as I
say you do need to make sure you get a proper diagnosis first. Now I'm going to
give you the link to that video for that exercise in the bottom of this in the
comment section of this video so please do check it out, that's my first exercise
I would recommend. The second one involves improving your balance or more
accurately your proprioception, which is your body's positional sense, so doing
things like standing on one leg with your eyes closed when you're cleaning
your teeth morning and nights can really help to improve that perception
and that's really important, just make sure when you're doing those exercises
that you are hovering your hands over something solid so that if you do feel
wobbly you can hold on and you don't fall over, so that's my second one. My
third but by no means least is more about the strength of your calf muscles
and included in that not just the shortening of your calf muscles but the
lengthening of your calf muscles too and making sure that you're doing that
exercise with the correct alignment, I believe that the number of the exercise
that I'm describing is exercise number 42 on the octopus clinic website but as
I say I will put those three exercises down at the bottom of this video. Now a
bit of a bonus bit of advice is that if you have plantar fasciopathy then
it's worth generally training your legs as well, so things like training your
glutes muscles, your quads muscles, by things like squats or split squats or
other lower body exercises and your core muscles too because general conditioning
will help to reduce the amount of strain going through that specific bit of your
body. Okey doke so a few things before I
finish up, I want to just advise you not to do tons and tons of stretching as
I've mentioned but also not to bother with things like icing it or rolling it
unless it's really swollen and warm in which case ice can be helpful. So what
can you do to sort of relieve the short-term pain? You can use some taping
and there are some techniques that you can use to tape your own feet or
obviously go and see a physio who can do a professional job. Now last but not
least, one of the really important things about a plantar fasciopathy is your
general health, now I know that if you are a healthcare professional you're
probably very short of time and the amount of time that you can spend on
looking after your own health is minimal but it is so important so things
like making sure you're eating healthily, loads of veg, loads of healthy food,
minimising sugar, not smoking, minimal alcohol, all those things that you know
about that will help you to recover from this injury,
likewise stress and sleep will have a huge impact so making sure that you're
managing your stress, going to see your GP if you are feeling a little bit
overwhelmed or you're concerned that your mental health isn't great, and
talking to friends about those things, and then sleep, so a few tips on sleep if
you can try and get into a regular sleep routine and not use any kind of screen,
that means your phone, your TV, your computer, whatever, nothing for two hours
before you go to sleep then that will help and obviously try not to have caffeine too late in the day
and do try and avoid alcohol because we know that even one glass of wine can
have a negative effect on sleep and sleep is when so much of healing,
recovery and repair occurs. So I hope that's been helpful, please do press the
subscribe key, please share this with as many people as you can and I look
forward to seeing you next time and don't forget please do let me know what
you would like me to do a video on next, bye!