I wanted to provide an update, as it's been a while since I posted last. This is not so much about footwear as it is about healing from plantar fasciitis, so I hope my readers don't mind a slight veering from the topic.
So, it's been several months since trying the Strassburg Sock and my plantar fasciitis has not come back. A new problem began to make itself noticed, though - the top of the affected foot hurt! It wasn't all that bad, just annoying, and I thought it would go away on its own. It was located not on the arch, but the top of the instep, the bony part of the foot between the arch and the toes. It hurt a medium amount - not terrible, but enough so that if I twisted my foot on uneven ground, I'd wince with pain. I actually thought I had a mild stress fracture, but it didn't get better or worse like a stress fracture I'd had in the past had done. Since I don't have medical insurance, I didn't see a doctor and just waited for it to get better.
It did, to some degree, but not much. I thought it odd that it seemed to happen on the same side as not just the plantar fasciitis, but my trick knee. Then I realized that pretty much that whole side of my body was frought with various kinds of injury. The other side of my body wasn't much better, for that matter - but all the major trauma seemed to happen on the plantar-fasciitis side.
Years ago, I had read Bonnie Pruden's Pain Erasure, a book about trigger points. I'd found it moderately helpful, enough so that I occasionally used trigger point therapy (or what I thought of as trigger point therapy) on myself, with mildly beneficial results. My husband even used his particularly painful version of TPT to release longstanding trigger points in my calves that were probably making the plantar fasciitis worse. It wasn't enough to eliminate the heel pain - I needed the Strassburg Sock to take up that slack. But it helped, and I had helped others with it, like my mom.
But last month I bought and read a book called The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook by Clair Davies and Amber Davies - apparently the "bible" of dealing with myofascial pain, used by health practitioners as well as laypeople. The book focuses on how to give yourself trigger point therapy - how to identify the specific muscles causing the pain and how to deactivate the pain signals, release the knot, and allow the muscles to heal. It is extraordinarily detailed. Since using this book, I've been able to better control my headaches to the point of reducing my need for painkillers by half, reduce my knee pain, reduce stiffness in my neck, reduce pain I thought was carpal tunnel syndrome (which isn't considered to have a muscular cause), and, most impressively, eliminate the top-of-foot pain I had been experiencing for months, actually ever since using the Strassburg Sock and getting rid of my plantar fasciitis symptoms. (And no, I don't know if the Strassburg Sock caused the top-of-foot problems somehow - it might have - but the benefits were such that I did not regret using it, and I'll use it again if the PF flares up again.)
What did I do to help my foot? I massaged, using the techniques in the book, two or three trigger points on the sides of my calf and a few points on the foot itself. Immediately I could feel better range of motion. I did this for a few days and made it much better, and now do it again whenever it twinges. I also made sure to get exercise by walking on uneven ground, because I felt it important to return the foot to a more healthy range of motion. It helped.
Although a massage modality, trigger point therapy is not touchy-feely and it does not feel particularly good. It's not about mythical, mysterious zones on the body - it's strictly evidence-based. So if you're a skeptic, or have, like me, wanted to think feel-good massage helped you but was unable to when the pain it relieved returned hours after the appointment, you'll probably be surprised that trigger point therapy exists and isn't used more extensively by the standard healthcare industry.
It's not hard to do - you just need to read the book closely and follow the instructions. I am finding the technique used - a slow, brief series of 6 to 12 strokes in the same direction - to be critical, as I have previously "trigger pointed" some of the same points mentioned in the book in the past by holding down and pressing hard, and that had not been remotely as effective as the lighter approach described in the book.
I am reading, and re-reading the book. I'm doing trigger point therapy not just on myself, but anything that walks if it winces and is willing, like my husband and my sister-in-law (and yes, it helped them, too, with hip issues, headaches, and back, neck, and shoulder pain). The bizarre thing is, unlike most flaky therapies or even those that sound technically reasonable but never seem to do much...this stuff actually helps. It gets rid of the pain and makes me more flexible.
So to bring all this back around to plantar fasciitis...if you've tried everything and you've tried the Strassburg Sock and it seems like it should have worked but it didn't...consider trying trigger point therapy, either with a professional massage therapist who is WELL VERSED in it, or, if you don't have insurance to cover that or can't find such a practitioner, with the Davies' book. I think now that it's probably critical to fully healing from chronic cases of plantar fasciitis over the long run, at least for some people. If you feel like you're kind of getting better but the pain returns, the problem might be twofold (well, at least according to my theory): the plantar fascia heals in a foreshortened position (which is what the Strassburg Sock is good for preventing), and trigger points make the calf and foot muscles both weak and tight so that the cycle of injury continues.
Again, I'm not a medical practitioner so please don't take this as medical advice. And also I want to disclose that I do earn commissions from this website as explained in my disclosure.
So there you go - my update. I hope this helps you, because I'm so excited by the fact that my goal to become less dependent on painkillers, which I don't tolerate very well, now seems realizable. I'll try to keep you updated on how the book is helping, or not helping.
No comments:
Post a Comment