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Plantar fasciitis is an irritation of the plantar fascia, which is the tough semi-muscular, semi-ligamentous tissue that runs the length of the bottom of the foot.  Plantar fasciitis is experienced as intense pain and aching in the bottom of the foot, usually brought on or increased by being on one’s feet for long periods of time, particularly on hard surfaces, and wearing poorly supportive shoes.  It is also seen in distance runners and in other individuals who subject their feet to a lot of shock-absorption, but in my experience, bad footware is usually at least partially involved.

Wearing unsupportive shoes gradually takes its toll on the arches of the feet and causes increased tension on the plantar fascia and begins to create tenderness and pain.  I have observed that this problem is extremely uncommon in people who go barefoot much of the time, and for the longest time, this made no sense to me because obviously when you are barefoot you don’t have any arch support.  But that’s where I was wrong. 

What I finally realized is that the body provides its own arch support through natural foot muscle contraction.  The bottom of the feet contain nerve receptors that trigger a series of muscular contractions that maintain the arch as the different parts of the foot hit the ground.  The problem is that when you wear shoes, those nerve receptors are constantly in contact with the bottom of the shoe and don’t differentiate when they should fire off the normal sequence of muscle contraction the way they do when you are barefoot.  Because of this problem, if you have to wear shoes most of the time - as most of us do - you need to be sure to wear shoes with good arch support to compensate for the diminished firing of the nerve receptors.

In many cases, additional arch support may be needed to supplement what comes built in to most shoes.  Various products are available and different people have different preferences.  My recommendation is to use orthotics (shoe inserts) that provide both arch support and shock absorption to minimize the stress to the arches and plantar fascia and maximize foot comfort. 

Stay tuned for more plantar fasciitis tips on my natural remedies blog.

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