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The Health Brief

Two minutes before your feet hit the floor

A ten second hold, ten times, done sitting on the edge of the bed.

4 min read

Move it Monday

The worst ten steps of my day used to be the first ten.

Carol heard it before she saw it. A slow hiss through the teeth, then a shuffle to the bathroom on the outside edge of one foot.

That was the fall my right heel felt like a stone under the skin. Bad in the morning. Fine by ten. Bad again after I sat down with the paper.

So today is a stretch you do sitting down, before your foot ever takes your weight. It takes two minutes. And it has been put up against the stretch most of us were taught.

The move

Sit on the edge of the bed. Cross the sore foot over the other knee, so the sole turns up toward you.

Take hold of the toes with the hand on that side. Pull them back toward your shin. Slowly. You want a pull along the sole of the foot, not a sharp jab.

Now reach across with your thumb and rub the arch while you hold it. It should feel firm, like a guitar string. That firm band is what you are aiming at.

Hold for a count of 10. Do it 10 times. That is one set, and it runs about two minutes.

Three sets a day. And the first one before your foot ever hits the floor.

Do not bounce it, and do not go hunting for pain… a hard pull buys you nothing over a firm one.

What the test showed

A team led by Benedict DiGiovanni in Rochester ran this stretch against the calf stretch we all know… the one with your hands flat on a wall.

They took 101 people whose heel pain had run longer than ten months. One group got the toe pull. The other got the wall stretch. And 82 of them came back at eight weeks.

Everyone scored their own pain. On the two questions the team had singled out in advance, the toe pull group dropped 26 to 29 points. The wall stretch group dropped 10 to 12.

Now the part that gets left off. Across the whole seven question pain scale, the gap between the groups just missed the line for a real difference. Just missed it.

So the win sits on those two questions. And I will say what they were, because they are the two that matter at six in the morning. Your pain at its worst… and your pain on the first few steps after you get up.

Then the team gave everyone the toe pull and came back two years later. 66 answered. 94% said the pain was less. 92% were satisfied. 77% said nothing was off limits any more. Of the handful who went looking for more treatment, not one ended up in surgery.

Read those numbers carefully

The two year figures are the ones that get quoted, and they are the softest part of it.

By then everyone was doing the toe pull, so there was no comparison left in the study. And nobody was blinded. Every person knew which stretch they had been handed.

Those 66 are also two thirds of the people who started. The ones who never wrote back are the ones I would most want to hear from.

What holds up is the eight week gap. Aiming at the sole beat aiming at the calf, and it was not close.

Bear in mind what a stretch can and cannot do here. It will not rebuild the band under your arch… that is a job for load, and we will get to load on Wednesday.

What it does is give the band some length before you ask it to carry you. So the first step of the day lands on something long instead of something short.

That is enough for me. It costs nothing and it takes two minutes.

 

Do this

Sit. Cross the sore foot over the other knee. Pull the toes back toward your shin until the arch feels firm under your thumb. Hold 10, do it 10 times. Three times a day, and the first one before you stand up.

 

Ease off if

The pull turns into a sharp pain, or you get pins and needles in the foot. This should feel like a long pull along the sole and nothing else.

 

The kettle can wait two minutes. Mine does. Carol brings the coffee up now… which she thinks is a fair trade for an end to the hissing.

When to stop and call your doctor

Heel pain that is worst on the first steps and eases as you walk is the ordinary pattern. See your doctor if you felt a pop or tear and then could not put weight on the foot, if the heel is hot, red and swollen, if you have numbness or no feeling in the foot, if you have diabetes and any sore or break in the skin, or if the pain wakes you at night. Pain in both heels along with other sore joints points somewhere else and needs a proper look.

Here is to an easier first step,
Walt

One useful thing a day

Start with tomorrow morning.

A stretch, a sleeping position, a heat trick for a stiff hour. Short enough to read with your coffee. If one does not fit, skip it. The next one might.

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