I can’t believe that so many people are that gullible that they fall for the foot detox scam and I can’t believe that so many keep a straight face when they try and sell it. But it is selling well!

A foot detox is a bowl of water with some pads through which pass a small ion charge. You put the feet in the water and this is supposed to help rid the body of toxins. The evidence that it is doing this is the change in colour of the water as the foot detox takes place. It has been well demonstrated in a number of you tube videos that this foot detox is a scam. The water will even change colour if the feet are not even immersed in it.

The foot detox is really resting on the body detox movement and all of its dubious claims made for it.

Don’t fall for the foot detox scam.

One thing that I have come to the realisation with recently is that plantar fasciitis is due to too much load on the plantar fascia (kind of simple when you think about it!). So to treat plantar fasciitis you need to reduce that load. You reduce that load with weight loss, strapping, stretching and foot orthotics. Pretty much none of the other treatments for plantar fasciitis reduce the load. That does not mean that they are not helpful, as they will help the tissues heal, but I have to ask just how effective they are for plantar fasciitis if the load in the plantar fascia is not reduced.

That also raises the issue of foot orthotics for plantar fasciitis. The design features used on the foot orthoses have to reduce the load in the plantar fasciitis. Not all foot orthotics have design features that do that. Pretty much every single failed foot orthotic for plantar fasciitis that I have seen recently did not reduce the load. Adding design features to those orthotics help in most cases. Understanding these principle have really lead to what I believe is a massive increase in the success rate of using foot orthotics for plantar fasciitis.

In the last year or so I have add little use for any treatments for plantar fasciitis other than stretching and foot orthotics (with the right design features).

My latest blog post on plantar fasciitis is over at Running Research Junkie and on Its a Foot Captain!