Plantar Fasciitis and Running

[KnottedYet]

Our feet are nice flexible irregular blobby things that do a wonderful job on nice flexible irregular surfaces. (dirt)

So many foot problems come up because we live in a flat hard world. (pavement and floors) Every step our feet take in this homogenous hard flat world makes them move in one way, over and over again. It's a repetitive stress injury just waiting to happen. Some foot muscles get lazy because they are hardly ever asked to work. Some foot muscles swoon because they are forced to work every time and never get to pass the buck.

The plantar fascia ends up taking far more stress than it was meant to. It is your foot's last resort. (the muscles are the foot's first resort) All this stress that was never meant to be there starts causing microtears in the plantar fascia and pulling tissue away from the bone, which leads to heel spurs as the body fills in the gap with more bone.

You can think of modern shoes as an attempt to get a little "dirt" between our feet and the flat world we've created. Highly technical and over-engineered portable dirt, but really just dirt! Hard and flat on the sole side to match the hard and flat world. Irregular and flexible and smushy on the insole side to match the irregular flexible blobby foot.

Toe exercises and barefoot walking on Cobblestone Walkways (either real or fake) are quick ways to perk up the muscles that the foot should be using all along. http://www.fitter1.com/Catalog/Items/CBLSTN.aspx

I like VFF, but I can't wear them. Our toes want to work! Injini socks are great for freeing your toes inside shoes and they let you wear flip-flops or Chacos in colder weather. http://www.injinji.com/