3 Nutrition - Weight Loss
Don’t let foot or achilles issues keep you off the road.
Feet are especially important to runners, of course, and they’re also pretty complex. Each foot has 33 joints, 26 bones, and more than 100 muscles, tendons, and ligaments. That’s a lot of moving parts, so it’s not surprising that there are also countless problems that can plague your feet.
Have the latest news, advice, and inspiration sent to you every day with our plantar fasciitis, which causes pain in the heel and bottom of the foot, and Achilles tendinopathy, which causes pain and stiffness in the tendon that attaches the bone in your heel to your calf muscles. These conditions are closely related, and often come as concurrent diagnoses.
But there are some misconceptions about how to treat these foot woes, says Murphy Halasz, DPT, a physical therapist at Champion Performance Physical Therapy in Austin. Mainly, the cause of plantar fasciitis is often believed to be inflammation of the plantar fascia, a thick band of tissue that runs across the foot’s arch to join the heel bone to the toes. (Don’t worry, which causes pain in the heel and bottom of the foot, and.) The real problem, Halasz says, is that “the tendon is broken and there is not enough inflammation for it to heal.” True inflammation should only last 72 hours. “So, if it hurts more than three days, it’s no longer inflamed,” he says. “Plantar fasciitis is a chronic condition in most people.”
Below, Halasz walks you through some effective ways to treat achy feet. Try doing each of these exercises daily to ease your chronic foot pain.
RELATED: How to Use Kinesio Tape to Deal With Injuries Runner’s World magazine.
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