Common Running Injuries

Hey, it’s Dr. Gangemi, and in this Sock Doc video, I want to talk about some common running injuries. I want to talk briefly about plantar fasciitis and iliotibial band syndrome, and these other common running injuries that maybe you’ve already had, or you’ve heard about someone getting.

There’s a lot of information on the Sock Doc site already about most of these injuries, and how to go about correcting them in a natural way, natural injury treatment, natural injury prevention too. Meaning, hey, if you learn why the injuries are there, then you can hopefully prevent your chances of getting them.

So, don’t forget when you’re training, half of the equation of exercise, of performance, is training, and the other half is rest, and therefore recovery also. Rest and recovery have to do with how well you sleep, how well you eat, your stress during the day. So, remember that it’s not just about how hard you can push yourself, or how often or how long you can push yourself, but are you actually recovering well. That’s why a lot of people today are talking about, not so much about overtraining, or even overreaching, even though those terms are out there, but maybe even under-recovering.
So if you’re not sleeping well, if you’re eating poorly, maybe you’re eating too many refined carbohydrates in your diet, maybe you’re consuming too much caffeine, teas, coffees, chocolates throughout the day, maybe you’re not eating enough quality protein, maybe you’re not eating especially enough high-quality fats. My favorite fat, of course, is butter, heavy cream, egg yolks, bacon, grass-fed beefs and pasteurized porks, fish, nuts and seeds, avocados, that sort of stuff, of course, olive oil too. But all these fats help decrease inflammation in your body. They help to balance hormones and increase natural anabolic hormones in your body, along with high-quality proteins, again, from meats and eggs.

And if you eat really well, and if you decrease the stress in your life, then you can actually train harder. You can train longer, you can train at a higher intensity, and therefore increase your performance. You can adapt more to whatever activity you are trying to do, whether that’s strength, running, throwing a ball further, whatever you desire to do.

When your body doesn’t adapt properly, you maladapt. You start to compensate, and that’s how you end up becoming injured. You’re basically unable to recover. You push yourself too much, you break down, you get sick maybe, or you get injured.

And then next thing you know, you’re running or you’re doing whatever activity, and you’ve got pain in your foot. You’ve got plantar fasciitis. You’ve got pain on the side of your knee. You’ve got iliotibial band syndrome. Maybe you’ve got pain on the front of your lower leg, shin splints, or some numbing-type sensation in your foot, Morton’s neuroma.

All these injuries, for the most part, unless of course you actually fell and injured a muscle or injured a joint or a tendon at that time, most injuries are the symptom. They’re not the cause of what’s going on with you. They’re the end result of something else that you’ve done for a while, and haven’t properly taken care of yourself.

So therefore, when you’re recovering from an injury, it’s great to work around that injury and deal with that injury specifically so you can heal up quickly, but you also have to go back and correct the problems. You have to correct your diet. You have to correct unhealthy sleep patterns, unhealthy stress patterns, training issues. Again, like I just mentioned, are you doing too much? Are you going too hard? Are you doing more than what you can handle at a time? So you’ve got to look at these factors to recover from an injury, because that’s typically why you became injured as a runner, or as really any activity that you’re doing.

So, don’t just focus on the symptom. Don’t just focus on the injury, or whatever someone is naming it, whether you, or your physician, or your friend. But reconsider your whole body, and why you’re becoming injured, and how to increase your performance to the next level by taking care of these issues before you get to the point where your body breaks down.

Brand new Sock Doc site up. Make sure you check out often for some . . . lots of new videos are coming out. And of course, on the Sock Doc site, there’s already a ton of free information on there about injury treatment and prevention, health topics like sleep and asthma, recovery issues, training and performance, some shoe reviews, minimalist shoes of course. A lot of great information. Hope you come back. Check it out often, and you enjoying this video, put a comment if you’d like on here, and see you next time. Thanks for watching.
 

Dr. Stephen Gangemi "Sock Doc"

I'm a board-certified chiropractic physician and clinical nutritionist with a passion for true natural health care. I implement dietary & nutritional therapies, exercise & movement practices, and lifestyle changes along with manual therapy techniques to help the body heal and prevent illness and injuries.