♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Shrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- This video is a part of a series of videos
on plantar fasciitis.
So if you'd like to see the full series,
go to bobandbrad.com, go under the programming section,
and look for the series on plantar fascia.
- Yeah, it gives the information on how to
improve, repair, and cure plantar fasciitis from A to Z.
- From A to Z, yup.
Soup to nuts, as some people say.
- Ooh.
- Do you need an orthotic for plantar fasciitis?
We're gonna dive right into this.
First off, if you're improving, you know,
if your plantar fasciitis is getting better,
I wouldn't do this, I would hold off a bit.
- Right.
- Because maybe it's gonna get better.
- If you're making progress, why change the recipe?
- You also might try taping it first.
We have a video on taping.
And if that helps, then maybe yes, orthotic would help too.
- Right.
- Now, an orthotic device is placed in the shoe
to help you provide more arch support,
and it helps take stress off the fascia.
That's purely what we're trying to do.
So it's an orthotic insole,
it would replace the current insole in your shoe.
So here's an old tennis shoe here that I have,
a running shoe.
And you'd take out the old liner here, I guess.
And you can see this one has no arch support whatsoever.
- Right.
- And you wanna replace it with one that does.
- Like this one.
So, we're not experts on these,
on orthotics, Brad, by any means,
but I think we can feel real safe
in saying the following things.
Okay, we're gonna kind of have a list here.
You seem to disagree with me.
(laughs)
- No, no, I was gonna-- I just--
- You'll jump in? Sure.
- I'll interject as I feel appropriate.
- So it might help, first off,
research has shown that the orthotics can help
with plantar fasciitis.
Research has also shown that, quite often,
the ones that are off the shelf,
and are less expensive, of course,
are just as effective as the ones that are made for you.
- Right.
What I've done with myself, as well as patience,
is simply put one in your shoe, try it,
if the pain goes from a seven down to a three,
you keep wearing it.
- Yep.
That's very good advice.
- Your body tells you what's gonna happen
and, you know, if the pain drops down,
it means the stress is off,
and it's gonna allow it to heal much faster.
- And that is one of the points, Brad.
It should feel better immediately.
- Right.
- You shouldn't have to break it in,
it should help right away.
- Right.
- So the lifespan of these tend to be like six months or so,
where a custom one can last years.
But the hope I have with this, quite often,
is that you maybe won't even need one after six months.
- Right, right.
- And if you want to continue to use one,
you can buy a lot of off-the-shelf ones
before you have one that's custom made.
- Right.
Yeah 'cause they can be two to three hundred dollars
and easily more than that,
- Right.
depending on where you get it made.
And I don't know about you, Brad,
but I personally have seen a lot of people
that got custom ones, that's sitting on a shelf right now,
that it just didn't work for them.
- Right.
- So, it's an expensive way to learn, you know,
whether or not orthotic works for you.
- Right.
I know we'll get comments that
people have success with them.
Yep, and that's fine.
- Right.
- I mean we have no problem with that.
But, again, we're always trying to
look out for you and try to get the less expensive version.
So, a couple things to look at here.
First off, you're gonna wanna make sure,
we call it the "squish test".
When you go up to the orthotic,
you wanna squish it with your finger and your thumb,
and it should hold.
If it's giving way,
it's certainly not gonna support your arch.
It's too soft.
- Sure.
So if it squishes right down it's...
- Yeah, if it squishes right down,
the material's not good enough to help hold.
Like this one here, again, you know,
you can see it's got an arch there,
but this, you can see, that's not really the squish test,
but if I go like this it just gives way right away.
- Yeah.
I believe technically that's a durometer test.
- Leave it to Brad
to come up with a technical term like that.
- It's true!
- I have no idea-- okay.
- When you have rubber or that, that's how they measure,
just in case someone out there knows about it.
- The other thing is, you wanna do a standing test,
where you actually stand on it,
the standing gap test.
Now this one, it passes the squish test,
but there's no arch support here.
I don't know if you can see this or not,
but this is just a little, you know, ledge.
- Right, it's shaped like an arch,
but it doesn't have the integrity to really do the work.
Well, let's put it this way,
this isn't gonna pass the squish test, is it?
- Yeah, mhm.
There you go.
- And this one is more just a gel that you put,
a gel insole that you put in your shoe
to help get it a little cushy.
- Like if you work on a concrete floor
and you wanna add some cushion for that,
that's what this is for.
- So if I put something like this down,
you can see, well hopefully you'll be able to see,
and I stand and put weight on it,
are you able to, yeah, you can see that.
There's no support for my arch.
- Right.
I mean there's a large gap there.
- Yeah.
So let's take one here, Brad.
So this is the Powerstep by Pinnacle,
we did put a link below.
There's a lot of good ones,
so we're not telling you which one to buy,
but this one seems to be pretty decent.
Look at how I step on that, there's no gap.
I'm feeling a contact point right there.
- And if you take your foot off of there once, Bob,
this does pass the squish test, in a way,
because when you push, I mean,
there is a semi-rigid arch.
Rigid would be you couldn't move it at all.
Semi-rigid, it has some give and it springs back up.
- It has some give but it's not gonna give when I walk,
'cause I can see already it's holding.
- Right, right.
- So, those are the things you wanna look at.
You may need to trim,
a lot of these you need to trim down to fit in your shoe.
I just do it the simple way, Brad,
I imagine you do the same.
- Yep.
Take the old one.
- Just take the old one out and use it as a guide.
- Yep.
- Surprisingly enough, this is like perfect.
- Yeah.
- This would fit me.
Look at that.
But this one you can see
it would have to be trimmed a little bit.
- Yeah.
I usually just take a Sharpie
and trace it and cut it out.
- Sure.
- Give it to your kids to do as a little project.
(laughs)
- There you go, give it to the young ones.
All right, so that's all our information on orthotic.
You can check out the rest of the series
at bobandbrad.com
- There you go.
- Thanks.