Hey everybody, it's Doctor Jo. Occasionally, I'll have patients ask me questions, and I'm
not quite sure what they're talking about in the beginning. For example, I had a patient
the other week that asked me about his Plantain French Frydis. And it took me a few minutes
to realize that he actually meant Plantar Fasciitis. Now this is something that actually
can be very, very painful when you have it, and it can prevent you from walking sometimes,
even. Most of the time you feel it early in the morning when you first get out of bed.
But if you stretch your foot out a little bit, then it's not quite as painful. So today
what we're gonna do is I'm gonna show you some stretches for your Plantar Fasciitis.
So before we begin our stretches for our Plantar Fasciitis, I just want to introduce you really
quick to my assistant Bailey. And she's kind of sleepy, but, you know, she's definitely
here to support me in everything I do. So what I'm gonna have you do first, this is
gonna be a calf stretch. And um, what you can do is you can get a belt, or a dog leash,
if you have a dog. That makes it very nice cause they have loops on the end, but either
way, I'm gonna have you take your belt, or your dog leash, and what you're gonna do with
this one is usually when you just get a calf stretch, your gonna pull in like this. You
want your leg to be straight, and you're gonna relax your foot and pull towards you. Now
with Plantar Fasciitis, you actually want to get your toes involved, too. Now most of
the time when I'm just telling someone to stretch their calves, I don't want then to
get their toes involved, but with this one you want to stretch those toes as well as
your calf that's really gonna stretch out that fascia underneath which is basically
a tissue layer underneath that gets, that's the part that gets irritated. "Itis"means
irritated. So, guess how long you're gonna hold it? 30 seconds, 3 times each. That's
the standard for your stretches. So, you're just gonna big pull stretch, you want to keep
your knee straight. If your knee starts coming up, that's not gonna get the stretch. So make
sure that your knee is staying straight. Alright, after you get those stretches in, then what
you're gonna do next is a little bit of massage on your foot. You want to massage out that
fascia that's irritated. So you can take off your shoes, take off your sock. And make sure
your foot's nice and clean when you're showing it to people. And what you're gonna do is
just really simple, you can get some lotion which will help increase the heat in there,
make your fingers move a little bit easier, but what you're doing is, if you do have Plantar
Fascii... fi... I can't even say it right... Plantar Fasciitis. You'll be able
to feel some bumps in that fascia, and that's just that irritated skin in there. What you're
gonna do is your just gonna start off and you're gonna take your thumbs and you're gonna
push through there and then you're gonna go out at the and. And so you're pushing it out
as you go. And like I said, if you can get somebody to do it for you, it's a lot nicer.
Alright, but you're just kind of giving yourself a massage to really loosen everything up.
So probably about 5 minutes of that, and that should have everything a little bit loosened
up for ya. Alright so, then next thing we're gonna do is do some sitting stuff over here
on the couch. And maybe move Bailey out of the way. Alright - ooh, Bailey magically disappeared.
How convenient. Ok, so the next stretches I'm gonna show you are stretches you can do
as you're getting up out of bed before you actually get up and stand on your foot. Because
this is the most painful time. So I'm gonna take off my shoes cause I wouldn't have my
shoes on while I'm sleeping. And what I'm gonna do to start off with is you can get
something just like a noodle from the store. These are usually about 99 cents, not very
expensive. What you're gonna do is you're just gonna simply take your foot roll it all
the way to the heel, roll it back all the way back to your toes. And this is gonna stretch
out that fascia underneath. So as much as you can tolerate, you know it might be a little
painful cause you're stretching it out, but again you don't want tears coming down. So
you're just gonna stretch it back and forth, you actually want to do this for a couple
of minutes cause you want to get it really stretched out. Now my favorite thing to do,
and this is probably just as easy, is to get a water bottle from any store, and what you're
gonna do is you're gonna put it in your freezer and store it overnight. So this is actually
frozen right here, it's ice. And so what you're gonna do is your gonna do the same thing that
you did with the noodle, you're just gonna roll back and forth. But with the ice in there,
what that's gonna do id that's gonna calm down that inflammation. The "itis" part of
that Plantar Fasciitis. So you're simple just gonna roll back and forth and get it nice
and stretched out for a couple minutes before you get up and walk. And that should have
it stretched out and calmed down a little bit for you before you get ready to get up
and go for the morning. Alright the last stretch I'm gonna show you, you can do on a step that
you have at home. You don't actually have to have a step ladder like this, but I'm just
kind of showing you with this. You can do it on your steps going upstairs, a porch step,
but just somewhere where you can kind of hang your foot off of. You probably want to leave
your shoes on, I'm just showing you without it so you can see what's going on. What you're
gonna do is your gonna come up to the step, and you're gonna drop that heel down. And
what that's doing is that's really giving a good stretch on that Plantar Fascia down
there. So same kind of thing. You can guess it, you're gonna hold it for 30 seconds, and
you're gonna do it three times each. So just letting that heel, it will keep dropping further
the more it stretches out, so you're just gonna stretch, stretch, stretch, and then
come back up after the 30 seconds, shake it out. And then stretch it again. And that's
it! Alright, so there you have it. Those were your stretches for your Plantain French Frydis,
wait a minute, Plantar Fasciitis. So remember, if you liked it, click the "like"button, and
leave us a comment. And if you'd like to see some more exercises and some educational videos,
please go see me at AskDoctorJo.com. And remember, have fun, be safe, and I hope you feel better
soon.