Now I’m going to explain the causes of Plantar Fasciitis but first, let’s look at pronation and how the foot absorbs the shock of walking and running. When we walk the force generated when our heel hits the ground is significant, when we run it can reach 3 times our body weight.
This shock must be absorbed safely or our knees, ankles and hips would wear out while we were still children.
A key mechanism to absorb this shock is pronation or flattening of the foot.
When we put our weight down on our foot we land on the outside of our heel at the back. This is called heel strike. You may have noticed that your footwear wears out on the outside, back edge of your shoe.
As we move through our stride, the foot rolls in and becomes flatter. This is called pronation and as the foot flattens it stretches the plantar fascia which absorbs some of the load.
So pronation, or flattening of the foot, is a shock absorption mechanism.
There’s a structure inside your foot made of tough material like your ligaments and tendons which absorbs some of this load as the foot flattens. This structure’s called the Plantar Fascia.
The PF attaches to this bone underneath the heel, and runs forwards underneath the arch of the foot and to the base of the toes.
This is what the bones of the foot look like when the arch flattens and we absorb load.
As you can see, when the arch flattens, the PF is stretched like a spring, and absorbs some of the shock of impact.
To find out how to resolve Plantar Fasciitis go to www.simple-solutions.co.nz
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