Plantar Fasciitis

Plantar Fasciitis(PF) is a prime issue people come into our office looking to resolve.  It’s such a simple problem with a rather simple solution.  The solution takes work but is simple nonetheless.  First off lets explore the plantar fascia and try to understand its purpose.  This will give us a better idea of how it gets injured and how to rehab the area properly.

The plantar fascia has an embryological connection to the Achilles tendon which in turn arises from the gastrocnemius (calf muscles).  The plantar fascia runs from the heel bone(calcaneus) and spans out like a fan to the bottom of all the metatarsals of the foot(the bones right before you get to the toes).  The primary function of the plantar fascia is to help aid the arch of the foot when we stand, walk, run etc.  It is mainly connective tissue, which means it has some stretch(elasticity) to it, but like all tissues, has its limiting range of motion, or its max stretch.

The biggest issue we encounter in the world of functional movement is that most people use a variety of “aids” that put their body at a disadvantage.  The disadvantage that causes PF is that most shoes have heel lifts or other “support” that force our feet to work differently than they would when we are bare foot.   These “supports” were meant to make movements like running and hiking easier for us, but in actuality, they end up making the foot a very passive part of the body.  Passive in the sense that they make the feet rely on the shoe and support while typically atrophying certain muscles that give our foot rigidity and the ability to move properly.

Each foot has 26 bones, 33 joints and over 100 ligaments, tendons, and muscles.  We always say in the office “There are no useless parts of the human body, just parts that we do not know what the use is”.  Meaning you have every organ, muscle, tendon, cell for a reason.  When you stop using a part of the body, whether its a brain cell or muscle in the foot, you LOSE it!  We have to actively engage every part of the body in order to stay healthy.  This is the same reason why functional exercises(exercises that use multiple joints of the body) are so efficient in building strong muscles.

Most of the shoes we use today are restricting our feet from proper mechanics by inhibiting certain muscles.  For example, you have a set of muscles that primarily fan out(abduct) the toes a lot like the ones that allow you to spread out your hands.  When you stuff your foot into a shoe with a narrow toe box( the toe box is the part of your shoes that cover the toes) then the foot is constantly being restricted from spreading the toes.  After a number of blisters and sores from rubbing against the inside of the shoe, the brain recognizes that the activation of those toe abductor muscles is being met by an uncomfortable restriction.  The brain is amazingly adaptive and will stop activating those muscles because the result is painful.  Over time those muscles start to atrophy or breakdown, which is a common reason people get bunions at the base of the big toe.

Most people who suffer from bunions will have them shaved down at first.  A bunion is a bone growth at the inside of the base of the big toe.  Bone grows where there is stress and bone is very dynamic.   When the muscle that brings the big toe towards the midline of the body atrophies, it creates a lot of stress over the outside of the joint causing bone to grow there to help stabilize the area.  The most interesting fact about bunions is when most people get them shaved down, the bone regrows in that same area.  Why?  because shaving the bone growth doesn’t fix the CAUSE of the bone growth.  The cause of the bone growth is the muscles have atrophied.  Until the muscle tension in the foot changes, the bunion will continuously grow back.

Back to the topic at hand, When the muscles that are supposed to support the feet begin to atrophy, the foot loses its integrity.  This is why some people’s feet grow a few sizes.  Those intrinsic muscles of the foot help keep the foot in a particular position or posture.  When the posture is lost the foot works more like a pile of puddy play doh instead of a strong, cohesive unit.  The thing to keep in mind is although the foot gets wider and longer when the muscles atrophy, the plantar fascia doesn’t change its length.

Lets say the original length of the fascia is 10 inches.  When the foot is 10 inches long then the fascia can cover that area comfortably.  What happens when you have 10 inches of fascia to cover a newly expanded 12 inches of foot??  Extra stress is put on the plantar fascia causing inflammation around the area and thus: Plantar Fasciitis! Most people with PF go to their podiatrist, get an overly expensive set of foot orthotics and feel a little relief.  Once they take their foot out of the shoe with the custom orthotic they typically feel the same amount of pain as when the issue first started.  The real problem is NOT within the plantar fascia, it’s the lack of proper muscle activation of the foot.  Special shoes and orthotics put your foot in that “perfect” posture but what happens when you don’t have the orthotic?  Do you never walk barefoot again?  The solution to the problem doesn’t lie within a shoe or shoe insert.

“Then How do you solve the PROBLEM?”

When the foot regains the appropriate muscle strength, integrity is regained and that 12in foot goes back to being 10in and the stress is taken off the plantar fascia.  For more info on how to regain that strength, contact us for our foot exercise protocol.  We’ve helped many people regain the ability to walk comfortably using only NON invasive treatment of the neurological system as well as the musculo-skeletal system.  Visit us at http://www.functionalhealthspecialists.com or call us (925) 289-8011 to see if we can help.

The 1st step- Muscle work for the foot muscles is crucial.  This can be done easily with a golf ball or tennis ball.

2.  Use more flexible shoes- the more flexible the shoe the more you have to rely on building the muscles of the feet.  This is a BIG transition so make sure you have your chiropractor on hand to help with any adjusting the feet will need through out this transition.

3. Controlled toe raises, shortfoot exercises and other foot exercises will also help build those atrophied muscles.

Inflammation, pH Balance, and Cancer

We now are finding out that people with chronic problems- from Fibromyalgia to heart disease – all have one thing in common.  Their body’s environment is in an acidic state.  What does that actually mean?

For those of us who are unfamiliar with the pH scale, it stands for potential hydrogen.  Hydrogen itself is considered an acidic ion, based on its charge.  The more hydrogen in the system the more acidic the environment.  The pH scale runs from 1-14, with the 1 being most acidic and the 14 being the most basic or alkaline.  A pH of 7 is neutral.  Our blood should normally be around a pH of 7.3.

A lot of processed foods, whether they be natural or unnatural, cause our body to dive into an acidic state.  Why you ask? because they contain toxins the human body cannot handle.  Let’s define what I mean by toxin: A substance, synthetic or natural, that is foreign to the human body’s evolutionary system and cannot be properly digested or disposed of.  So yea that includes tar and the other 598 chemicals found in cigarettes, but it also includes:

• Pesticides used on conventionally grown vegetables and fruits
• Any medication that is not a direct form of natural herbs (ibuprofen, aspirin, lipitor etc)
• Mercury found in amalgam fillings and fish
• Aluminum in cookware, sodas, toothpaste, deodorant, canned foods etc.
• Environment pollutants in the air we breathe i.e. exhaust, smoke, fumes, plastics, industrial chemicals etc.
• Water – chemicals, synthetic fluoride, chlorine, polluted lakes, rivers, streams, often bottled water absorbs toxins from the plastic bottle itself!Most bottled water is ACIDIC!!
• Food – herbicides, pesticides, food additives, preservatives, hydrologized vegetable protein (aka msg, vegetable oil, canola oil, sunflower oil,) etc.
• Pesticides and fertilizers we use at home
• any foods you can be allergic too-Dairy, gluten, etc.

YES, toxins are all around us.  These substances are difficult to impossible for our bodies to digest or process.  What typically happens is they put stress on the liver (the organ responsible for your body’s detoxification) then the liver will typically store those toxins into our FAT CELLS!  This is the reason, if you have ever tried losing fat, you start to bloat and feel even worse at the beginning of a new diet or exercise regimen.  When you start to take those fat cells and burn them as energy, you release those toxins back into the system which then leads to inflammation.

We know inflammation to be the reason our ankles swell when we sprain them and this is very helpful for us because it stops us from further injury as well as letting us know there is a problem that needs to be addressed.  But inflammation can be affecting the rest of your system as well, it’s just a lot harder to recognize it when it’s in your gut or the vessels of your heart(until of course, it’s too late).  Inflammation is the key factor, we now know, in the underlying reason for heart disease!!  Not cholesterol or natural fat you get in your diet!  Our bodies need fat and cholesterol!  Cholesterol is the base for every hormone in your body, without proper hormone regulation you can suffer from any and every ailment known to man!  Hormones dictate the way we sleep, the way we eat, the way we regulate our blood pressure, the way we build muscle and so much more.   Cholesterol and fats are absolutely essential to a human’s well-being.

The interesting fact is that most other countries don’t have a lot of these same issues because of one main principle-they keep things natural!  From the way they raise their food, the air they breath, and the purity of the water they drink.  We eat so much processed food in the US and UK that our bodies are being bludgeoned with toxins on a consistent basis, which leads to chronic breakdown and chronic disease like diabetes and cancer!  We fail to see that conventionally grown crops or genetically modified crops can all be considered processed!!

Cancer patients and people with other chronic illnesses all have acidic systems.  We much often focus too heavily on the “cure” for cancer instead of the prevention.  Why? because there is a lot more money to be made in finding a cure and much more work in preventing it from happening in the first place.  The higher the pH reading, the more alkaline and oxygen rich the fluid you are testing will be. At a pH of 7.4 cancer cells become dormant and at pH of 8.5 cancer cells die.  So how do we fight cancer?  with proper nutrition, exercise and a fully functioning signaling system in the body.

The Brain is the master controller of the body, every health profession knows this, but i am one of the few health professionals that actually practices with this as the main concept and driving force.  In its essence, cancer is uncontrolled cell growth.  Whether that growth is in one spot(benign) or within the blood(blood runs through all parts of the body, when cancerous cells are in the blood they can travel ANYWHERE, we classify that as Malignant). We have cancerous cells growing in our bodies on a daily basis, all of us!!  Our immune system and signaling system can typically program those bad cells to apoptosis(cell death), thus curing us of cancer.  This is known and is our body’s default mechanism.   When the brain cannot connect to a particular part of the body, it is unable to signal those bad cells to die.  Those cells keep growing and growing until we feel it affect us.  That’s when we go to our MD and are taken by surprise when we learn we have CANCER.   So what changed?  What did we do wrong to allow those cells to keep growing?  What did we not do to allow those cells to keep growing?

Like any other monster, cancer needs the appropriate environment to live in – an acidic one where its enemy(our immune system) is unaware of the lurking danger.  We can change the acidic environment with our diet.  We can improve the signaling by making sure the brain and rest of the nervous system is communication full force, 100%, on all levels.

The diet part can be fixed with the help of someone educated in Metabolic Typing, my guru, Nathan Brammeier(nathan@crossfitadventure.com), is awesome.  For someone near your neck of the woods, contact us and we will help you find someone.

The signaling part is what i SPECIALIZE in! I make sure your nervous system is 100% in tact and free of any block or interference to allow your body to connect the signal from Brain to Body and Body to Brain.  Just like any other bodily system, it’s a two-way street.  I perform a non invasive procedure to allow your Brain to communicate to the rest of your body so you can function at 100% and tackle anything that comes your way.

For more on how call or contact us at 925-289-8011 or http://www.functionalhealthspecialists.com.

My Workout Journey-Be the Pillar!

“Losing weight is HARD.  Keeping the weight off is HARDER.”

Was my original mentality when it came to getting healthy.   In our society, we are told by every angle what we SHOULD be doing.  What we should be eating, how we should look, how we should be working out, how much we should weigh according to our height!  It seems like it never stops.  We miss the fact that when you are moving and eating healthy, the muscles we want or the magic number we are looking for on that dreaded bathroom scale, start to appear.  I’m here to share my story.

“Get healthy and you will lose weight/gain muscle…not the other way around. “

The moment I started to really understand this FACT, my life and body have been changing for the better.  I’m sleeping easier, am less anxious, less irritated, less STRESSED, eating less (No, not because im starving myself), shedding fat, and gaining muscles I wasn’t even aware I knew I had!  Ok the last one’s a lie, I knew those muscles were there, I just never FELT them.

There were some main components I can attribute this to:  Exercise, Nutrition, and Wellness care.  Yea yea we’ve seen those things before but not like this.  I will emphasize the exercise in a minute but to give a little background on my experience with “Health”.

My weight has always fluctuated for as long as I remember. I typically blamed my body for it saying “that’s just how I am!”  From 1999-2004(my HS years) I went from 155lbs to 255lbs by my senior year.  I started exercising regularly again my junior year of college (2006) and went from 280lbs to 230lbs. In 2008 I moved to the Bay Area and by that time I ballooned up to 265lbs.  Thanks to the help and motivation of some roommates(who were previously personal trainers) I took up long distance running again.  By 2010 I was down to 208lbs!! I felt great!

But running 30+ miles a week was hard to keep up with once I started seeing patients.  My stress levels always had a large influence on my body’s composition.  I can remember eating and working out with the same consistency but always gaining at least 5-10lbs when finals came around then dropping that weight literally weeks after.  From 2010-2012 I had gone through the largest transition of my life.  I went from being a fulltime student to opening my own practice.  As you can imagine, starting any business and keeping that business open is a very tough thing to accomplish.  It comes with a lot of stress!

This brings us to present day, where now, I weigh approx. 250 lbs.  I say approx. because I don’t weigh myself anymore, I refuse to use that as my measure of health success.  Rather I measure my health with how good I feel during a workout, how much energy I have when I wake up in the morning, and what my poop looks like( Yep i said it, one of the great indicators of how your digestive system is functioning).

Through networking for my office I had the ultimate gift in being able to work with CrossFit Adventure (CFA)  in Concord, CA.   I liked the concept of crossfit because it provided a full body workout that incorporated multi-joint movements -meaning- there are no bicep curls, no benching,(none of that stuff you see those huge guys doing at the local gym) but using multiple parts of the body during movements.  This is crucial to the human body because it not only relies on the major muscle groups that we can work out with the simple bench or curl, but, it also builds strength and endurance in the intrinsic muscles of the body that help stabilize us during particular movements.  This is one of the main reasons i find, as a practicing doctor of chiropractic and movement specialist, people who do those single movement workouts get hurt when they play a recreational sport and sometimes even just by getting out of bed!

Long story short-you work out ALL the muscles of the body, increasing your stamina and giving you a truly balanced workout that increases your body’s proprioception( receptors found all over your body that tell your brain where your body is in space, ie- how your brain knows where your hand is when you move it).  CFA breaks the crossfit mold because they emphasize PERFECT MOVEMENTS; not how much weight is on the bar or how fast you did it.  Yes those things are used to help track your progress but you only progress when you have PERFECT FORM.  Plus, the atmosphere is one in which I stepped into knowing no other members and was treated by family not only by the coaches but by the members as well.  I do Crossfit 2 days a week and run 3 miles 2 days a week.  That’s it. Total time out of my life to exercise typically 60-120 minutes a WEEK.   I used to spend as much time watching “Criminal Minds” in a day!

A huge benefit i had was the convenience of having chiropractic care for the last 5 years.  This kept me moving comfortably!! It started with Dr. Noel Romo who now works in San Francisco.  He helped keep me moving properly to be able to get down to 208lbs and run my first Half Marathon where i blew my own expectations out of the water.  I averaged  7:50 mile and finished the second half of the SF marathon in an hour and 53 minutes!!  Yes chiropractic is WAY more than back pain.  But we’ll talk about that another time.

The other benefit i had early on in life were the coaches i had in high school.  Due to financial reasons, i never had the opportunity to play organized sports until i was in high school.  I tried doing Cross Country but gravitated towards football.  I went to South Hills High School in the Los Angeles county area and struck gold with the coaching staff there.  They knew proper workout techniques and gave me the foundation in my movements, so when i go to work out now, those movement patterns are engrained in me!

Another major advantage is my knowledge of the human body.  When something wasn’t feeling right i could trace to where the issue was being caused.  For instance i used to have Adrenal gland issues(the adrenal glands are largely responsible for your energy levels!) It wasn’t until i cleaned up my diet and learned how to WALK properly that i found relief with my adrenal glands! “Crazy” you may think.  When we say everything in our body is connected, its true.  It’s the reason why a sprained ankle can lead to shoulder pain!!

So instead of working out tirelessly just to keep weight off, i am now building lean muscle without feeling like i am “killing” myself. I have the support group around me to keep me motivated as well as MY own chiropractors Dr. Laura Wilson and Dr. Noah Kaplan to keep me functioning properly.

The problem for me was that i had already experienced success working out in a different way: Running long distance.  Although i knew all the research that showed running for long periods of time isn’t the most effective use of your time and energy, i found results in it! This is what i had grown to know, what i trusted.  It was hard to “buy in” to the short spurts of exercise at Crossfit known as the WOD(workout of the day).  Then it got to the point where my body was beginning to breakdown from outside stresses and ,unfortunately, my mentality really took a dump.  I had a lot to be down about, a LOT of room for excuses.  The office, my relationships with family and friends, losing my niece 2 weeks before her scheduled birth, losing my uncle a few months later –  I had a lot of reasons to stop doing anything and i used those reasons as deterrents as opposed to motivation.

So being in this “hole” i had very minimal income.  Down to the point where driving somewhere was a financial issue because of gas.  Buying groceries was a second thought and when i did buy them, it was bare essentials-meats and veggies.  It opened my eyes to how we can get so caught up in the superlatives of life and totally neglect the essence of life (eating, breathing, moving, and feeling). It really allowed me to reflect on what was truly important to me: helping others.  You can only help others after you help yourself.  Its not selfish thinking, but more so the idea that you can’t be a pillar for others to lean on in hard times if you do not have a solid foundation.  So, i bought in to the system, and i have NEVER felt better!  Sometimes, unfortunately, it takes a situation of us being in a dark or low place to spur (what we think is a) radical change.  The thing is, these changes dont have to be radical, you just have to get the information!!  Instead of just doing something because someone told you it’s “what you should be doing” you do it because you’ve learned that is what your body was made to do!!

Whatever your story or situation, there is a way YOU can accomplish your goals of being healthy. You just need the right team to help you because its not something that is meant to be done alone and you shouldn’t have to!

We are always here to help!  925-289-8011, http://www.functionalhealthspecialists.com

“Most people don’t know how good their body is designed to feel”-Kevin Trudeau

Do you?