Like always I’ve said, the worst thing about chronic plantar faschiitis is that you don’t see any improvements for a long time and you don’t know when your suffering is over. It’s like the concentration camp at the world war 2. Prisoners said that the toughest thing for them was that they weren’t able to know how the war situation was and that meant they couldn’t know how long they should have been patient.
But understanding what happens to your chronic plantar faschiitis can help you to be patient. You might start having ‘’Why should I keep suffering’’ thought and blaming your destination. But I can give you a clear answer what happens to the chronic plantar faschiitis. Usually skeletal muscle cells are regenerated every three months and usually chronic plantar faschiitis goes on more than 6 months and more than one year is not a rare case. These two things sound completely conflict.
Here’s why :
There are two types of cells‘ regeneration : 1.apoptosis and 2. nekrosis. Apoptosis is normal programmed death of cells. An old or damaged cell die and is replaced to a new cell. That’s why our injury can be healed. Nekrosis is also cells’ regeneration. But when they are reborn, they cause low level inflammation. In addition to, they are reborn as a damaged cell which causes nekrosis when they are reborn. And again this damaged cell causes nekrosis not only to themselves but also to other normal cells because they cause low level inflammation and same thing goes on and on.
This is exactly what happens with your chronic plantar faschiitis.
What’s the causation of chronic plantar faschiitis?
The reason why nekrosis is caused is oxidative stress to mitochondria and ischemia, in other words, localized lack of oxygen.
Mitochondria is an organ in every cell which plays a key role of aerobic metabolism and apoptosis. The more mitochondria works well, the more cells are regenerated in a apoptosis way.
Ischemia is caused by trigger points of soft tissues. When one or localized soft tissue is exposed by stress, the body makes trigger point there. Trigger points support damaged tissues and fix it like taping. Maybe long time ago, like 10,000 years ago, it was necessary because every small things affected if you could survive or not and when you got severe trigger points, these trigger points told you better not to move to survive and you might save the energy for the situation that a lion was chasing you.
But in our modern society, small things don’t affect if we can survive or not. If it’s just a small pain or stiffness of muscles, you go to work, school or even train especially if you are a professional athlete. If you don’t treat properly your trigger points, it gets bigger and oxygen and nutrients don’t go to the affected area.
Then cells should survive and be patient against physical stress without enough nutrients and oxygen and then they make a decision to cause nekrosis because cells which cause nekrosis can survive much less oxygen than cells which cause apoptosis can do. Because nekrosis doesn’t require mitochondria, that means they don’t need oxygen and generate energy by anerobic metabolism. Again, mitochondria is an organ which plays a key role of aerobic metabolism.
Long story short, in case you have chronic plantar faschiitis, you have nekrosis, in other words, chronic low level inflammation in your soft tissues (maybe not only in the plantar fascia but also in calf and hamstrings). And this chronic low level inflammation is caused by trigger points and oxidative stress. That’s why you should get rid of trigger points and think about anti-oxidative stuff.
In terms of getting rid of trigger points, I already wrote in my article ‘’How to fix chronic plantar faschiitis and also explained in my Youtube video ‘’How to fix chronic plantar faschiitis’’. But you should and might want to think about also diet and nutrition. I will write about it next time. If you don’t want to miss a new article, please subscribe this website from the link below and also I would be happy if you ask me something about plantar faschiitis or nutrition and help you. Thank you for your reading and please subscribe or contact me from the link below.
