I personally have had pain so bad that I literally could not sleep. Just the pressure of my foot weight resting in an elevated position on a pillow was excruiating. I would not wish foot pain on anyone.
Due to my own issues with severe periodic foot pain, I was compelled to search for solutions that were effective and expedient. My professional work involves standing on my feet most of the day along with walking. I also prefer an active life outside of my office and having foot pain was not something I wanted to try to have with me the rest of my life.
My search led me to some surprising solutions that totally eliminated my pain and I would like to share them with you.
Feet are an engineering miracle and when they function correctly they support all of our weight with no pain whatsoever. The human foot has 26 bones, 33 joints, 107 ligaments, 19 muscles and tendons and three arches. The 52 bones in your feet make up about 25 percent of all the bones in your body. Abnormal function of the joints, muscles, or ligaments can certainly bring about foot pain. However, problems further away from the foot can also cause pain in our lower extremity, including our feet.
Most people are used to a linear thought process when it comes to pain in the body. In other words, if they have a pain in their foot, the problem must be in the foot. Sometimes the problem IS located in the foot. The clue that reveals the foot problem is local, is that treatment directed to the foot itself relieves the problem and the pain goes away.
Conversly, if you have tried multiple treatments for your foot pain or plantar fasciitis unsuccessfully, you likely have a problem in your foot AND additional causation elsewhere.
Common medical foot pain treatments are:
In my case, my foot pain had multiple causes. Stubborn foot pain patients who have successfully conquered their foot pain have had multiple underlying causes. Once the impediments to healing foot pain are identified and handled with the appropriate treatment, success is achieved.
Perhaps the most common cause is a viscious cycle set up by the foot pain itself. Basically the nerves that trigger a pain response (called small diameter afferent [SDA] nerves) are actually registering the pain in a part of the brain called the parietal lobe. The longer the pain nerve pathway is activated, the easier it is for the pain pathway to fire.
Often the nerves that send normal sensations from the nerve endings in the foot are damaged. This cause is common in neuropathy due to diabetes, chemotherapy, gluten intolerance damage, etc. The way our body is wired is quite interesting when it comes to pain. As it turns out, the normal sensation nerves (called large diameter afferent [LDA} nerves) when functioning as intended, turn on circuitry that inhibits pain both in our spinal cord and in our brain. When the normal sensation nerves are compromised for whatever reason, the pain nerves become active. This situation is the reason why patients who consult my office receive a functional nerve evaluation for their foot pain, including plantar fasciitis.
Another area that can cause foot pain is a problem in your lower back area of your spine. If you weren't aware, the nerves that enable you to feel and control your feet come from your lower back. In fact the nerves that go to your feet are a branch off the sciatic nerve. If you have any abnormal function or damage to your lower back you could have foot pain. Part of my thorough evaluation is to determine if there is any involvment of the lumbar spine.
The "recipe" I use to help people recover from chronic foot pain is a multi-modal one. This approach means I layer several treatment strategies that are aimed at helping the various issues I found during the evaluation. Typical methods employed are the following:
*Trigenics® Myoneural procedures for the lower extremity. Trigenics® is so effective because it combines three treatment techniques together simultaneously to get a cumulative effect that you would not get performing one at a time. It uses resisted exercise neurology to help reboot your brain to body communication, along with concentrative biofeedback breathing to allow the body to accept the changes, and lastly it uses muscle sensor manipulation which opens the door for the rebooting process to occur. The three together combine to create a “software update”. Physical, chemical, and emotional stresses can corrupt our software and create imbalances in the way the brain talks to the body. While most people work on the body, we work on the brain for results that are both immediate and sustainable.
Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy (PEMF). PEMF is an electro-magnetic field applied to a painful or dysfunctional area of the body. What makes this therapy so powerful is two things: the strength of the magnetic field generated by the machine, and the pulsating of the field around the part of the body that is not functioning properly. PEMF works by re-energizing damaged cells via inducement of electrical changes within the cell that restore it to its normal healthy state. It improves the ability of the membrane of the cell to allow the oxygen, water and nutrients it needs into the cell…and allows the metabolic wastes to exit the cell in a normal manner. The pulsing action of the PEMF literally “exercises” the cells that are exposed to the magnetic field and allows them to normalize. There are also studies that show that PEMF helps tendons and connective tissue to repair faster. [6], [7], [8]
Specific joint manipulation to reduce of eliminate loss of joint play in the foot or ankle. [10] There are three movements within a joint: active, passive, and joint play. A well-esteemed medical researcher and clinician by the name of Dr. John Mennell taught the importance of proper joint function, particularly joint play, and how it relates to proper joint function, According to Dr. John Mennell's research, joint play occurs within the paraphysiological space (the last bit of normal movement beyond passive movement) within a joint. Joint play is the small amount of normal motion a joint needs to have in order to move without triggering pain nerves to fire. Without this normal joint play, nutrients cannot be exchanged, thus, degeneration occurs. According to Dr. Mennell, "Voluntary movements cannot be achieved unless certain well-defined movements of joint play are present. Movements of joint play are independent of the action of voluntary muscles. These joint play movements are very small but precise in range; it is upon their integrity that the easy, painless performance of movements in the voluntary range depends. Their integrity, not their range, is the basis of their importance. It is the summation of movements of joint play and movement in the voluntary range that make up the movement of the living anatomy."[11] The following statements are a few basic truths about joint play from Dr. Mennell's work:
"The primary fault usually lies in synovial joints which make up joint play. And if the primary fault can be corrected, the secondary abnormalities resulting from it can usually be readily corrected too."[12]
Don't keep this information a secret. Tell your friends and family that there is a solid non-surgical answer for chronic foot pain. Send them to www.MichiganFootHelp.com today.
*The trademark Trigenics® is owned by the International Institute of Trigenics® Inc. Johnson Chiropractic Neurology & Nutrition is a licensee of the trademark
For more details about the natural approach I take with my patients, take a look at the book I wrote entitled: Reclaim Your Life; Your Guide To Revealing Your Body's Life-Changing Secrets For Renewed Health. It is available in my office or at Amazon and many other book outlets. If you found value in this article, please use the social sharing icons at the top of this post and please share with those you know who are still suffering with chronic health challenges, despite receiving medical management. Help me reach more people so they may regain their zest for living! Thank you!
References:
1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15523898
2. http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/plm.2014.3.issue-3/plm-2013-0063/plm-2013-0063.xml
3. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02763980
4. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24831690
5. http://www.klaser.co.uk/files/KLaser-Calcaneal-Repair.pdf
6. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9111460
7. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8320274
8. http://www.eurjmedres.com/content/19/1/37
10. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2565620/
11. Mennell, John. Joint Pain, Little Brown and Company, 1983
12. IBID