There seems to be increasing advocacy for the use of cannabis oil (medical marijuana) for plantar fasciitis recently, mostly from what I can see, from those who sell it. If you hang out in some of the online communities for those with plantar fasciitis, you see a lot of very bad advice being given, mostly based on anecdotes. In the last year or so, the most popular advice was to use magnesium supplements to cure plantar fasciitis. This was all the rage for a while with an extraordinary number of people advocating its use based on it working for them (when we have no idea if it actually worked or not or if it was just a placebo or just part of the natural history or any other explanation). There is no mechanism that I could find by which it could affect plantar fasciitis. More recently, the volume of advice for the magnesium supplements has started to drop off but is being replaced with an increasing amount of advice for the use of cannabis oil to treat plantar fasciitis. Some of the testimonials are quite compelling … if they are true.
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Platelet Rich Plasma for Plantar Fasciitis – writing about something I know nothing about…
Platelet Rich Plasma for Plantar Fasciitis
I have to be honest and admit that the use of platelet rich plasma (PRP) for plantar fasciitis is something that I have had no more than a superficial interest in. I pretty much scanned the abstracts of the studies and systematic reviews as they are published of it in this thread and the one comparing it to other interventions on Podiatry Arena. I also note comments in social media on it from those whose views I respect. From my superficial understanding, it works, it does not work, it works, it does not work … a lot of the studies that compare it to other treatments do not do the “other” treatment very well (ie wrong dosing), which can easily bias the study to PRP being better. Some of the comments in social media from people who I consider real experts, especially in the context of tendinopathy are that it does not work, yet a lot of people claim it does. Yes, I know that the “plantar fasica” is not a “tendon” and it may or may not be appropriate to translate “tendinopathy” research to “plantar fasciitis” (not that this stops people doing so or not doing so if the research on it matches their pre-conceived biases!).
Plantar fasciitis loading programs – overhyped evidence
I have managed to get myself into a few spats in social media lately over the results of the Rathleff et al (2014) study on loading programs for plantar fasciitis mainly because I think the study is way overhyped and blindly and widely shared by too many devoid of critical thinking skills. I blogged about this study at the time on my other blog, so thought I would re-litigate the main issues here, so I can refer those in my social media spats to have a read of.