Heal your plantar fasciitis heel pain, that is, so you can have happy feet again!

I wrote here about plantar fasciitis a few weeks ago. Plantar fasciitis (PF) is inflammation of the fibrous tissue on the bottom of your feet, which I suffer from. A bothersome pain, and it can take a long time to heal.

A web-based program I tried and liked is Plantar Fasciitis Treatment by Brent Abel. Brent’s website is webtennis.net (is “net” some tennis humor, Brent?). He’s a tennis pro, both player and teacher - and what was most important to me, a fellow sufferer of PF, so his knowledge came from personal as well as professional experience.

The Plantar Fasciitis Treatment program has several components:

1. A CD/DVD or downloadable program. This is the core of the program, and includes 3 stages, healing, strengthening and prevention. There’s both written and video material for each stage, so it’s reinforced. For some of the stretches, videos were extremely helpful to understand exactly what to do.
2. Progress sheets to keep track of what exercises you’re doing and your progress. This also reinforces doing the exercises.
3. Daily emails to support the program. These were helpful to break down the larger components into smaller, more manageable pieces. As well, it was naturally reinforcing to keep you doing the exercises - it doesn’t help if you buy something, then are remiss in actually using it. The emails are like having a personal coach come to your door everyday!
4. Emailing Brent directly. Brent has his email address on all the material - through the daily emails, he’s a click away. I did email him several times with questions and always got a quick, helpful reply.

The program is well-developed, solid in physical rehab knowledge, and has numerous components that reinforce your using it.

My only concern was medical oversight. If you’ve been told by a medical professional that you have PF, this product would be very useful. You could potentially use it even before seeing a physical therapist to see if your symptoms cleared up with the program, or you could use it in conjunction with PT. The program could be even more useful it if had some guidance about when to go back for a follow-up medical eval, or when to stop the program and see a physical therapist, perhaps “if-your-symptoms-haven’t-cleared-up-by-now-or-have-gotten-worse…” advice.

Related to this concern, the disclaimer about seeking medical advice is a bit casual for me, more a “my lawyer makes me do this” joke. I actually think this step is important, but perhaps that’s my MD degree talking.

The cost is very manageable - $37 (download) or $47 (CD/DVD and download).

Overall, I think it’s a very strong product. I’m still in the “healing” phase, as I also have a partial tendon tear, etc., so my progress has been slow. But I believe this program is helping my recovery.

You can preview some of the program. If you try it, let me know how you do!

(Periodically, I’ll write here about products you might be interested in. These will be products I’ve requested to review, and you’ll read about them here only if they’re helpful - these aren’t advertisements. If you have something you’d like me to consider, send a note to Ask the Doctor.)

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