Today I was speaking to a woman who is suffering from heel spurs on both feet, causing her to stop running (her favorite sport). She went to her foot doctor who gave her orthotics, which seemed to temporarily ease the pain, but she can’t walk barefoot.
Fortunately she had just received my DVD The Julstro Guide to Treating the Lower Body so it was easy to explain to her how to treat her calf muscles.
Your calf muscles (gastrocnemius and soleus) both merge into your Achilles tendon and then insert into the back of your heel. When the muscles contract normally you lift your heel up off the ground (ie: when you stand on your toes). However, if the muscles are shortened by spasms they are pulling up on your heel bone, but you are still keeping your foot flat on the ground. This causes pressure at the insertion point of the tendon, and the tendon may even be pulling hard enough to begin to separate from the bone and to cause an inflammation at the area.
The body, in it’s wisdom, sends bone cells to the area to hold on to the tendon, so it makes logical sense that this could easily be the cause of a bone spur — the build-up of bone cells holding on to the tendon of a tight muscle. You can’t bring your heel down without causing pain. Orthotics will bring the floor up to your heel and will therefore make it feel less painful, but it isn’t solving the problem. The answer to this problem is also logical… release the tension in the calf muscles so they stop pulling on the tendon and your foot can come down to the floor.
We spoke about her calf muscles and why they are causing this bone spur, and the tight Achilles tendon she was feeling. The treatment is so simple, just release the tension, and with the DVD she was able to watch the treatment and then do it herself.
She was doing it as we spoke on the phone, and it worked perfectly. By the time we were ready to hang-up, the bone spur was still there, but it didn’t hurt to step down normally. The spur may or may not eventually disappear, but as long as she wasn’t feeling pain she didn’t really care.
BTW, it is my theory that since the body sent the spur there for a reason (hold on to the tendon) that you shouldn’t try to remove the spur until the muscles are fully released and the tension on the tendon has been eliminated.
Wishing you well,
Julie