FitOldDog’s Moriarty Linked To His New Business Friend, Statins Can Induce Plantar Fasciitis

The lady’s preacher told her that his feet also hurt, while he was taking Lipitor.

As an alternative to prayer, and if you’re not on statins, you might consider our wonderful roadmap. It could get you out of the treatment maze in one piece, with some money left in your pocket.

I just received a valuable piece of information from my friend, Lisa, in the form of a link to an article that stated the following: “Heel pain from plantar fasciitis is another common complaint among those taking statin drugs. One correspondent reported the onset of pain in the feet shortly after beginning statin treatment. She had visited an evangelist, requesting that he pray for her sore feet. He enquired whether she was taking Lipitor. When she said yes, he told her that his feet had also hurt when he took Lipitor.”

It would appear that statins can induce plantar fasciitis.

I’ve been ranting on about the dangers of statins, with respect to their muscle toxicity, for some time, as in an article at this link, entitled, “On NPR’s The People’s Pharmacy, I Finally Heard A Cardiologist Talking Sense About The Risks Of Statins: I Got Better Results With Exercise.”

But how does muscle toxicity fit with our proposed plantar fasciitis disease progression model, you might ask? Remember, we hypothesized, and we’re not the first, that the initial cause of plantar fasciitis foot or heel pain is a proprioceptive imbalance, throwing off the body’s movement feedback loops, leading to perceived warning pain, followed by abnormal movement, placing physical stresses on the body that can, if not stopped, progress to more severe effects, including connective tissue micro-tears or worse.

Pain is a feature of the myotoxicity (muscle toxicity), such as that induced by statins, which would certainly trigger a warning to the proprioceptive machinery of the body to throw everything ‘out of whack,’ and this might well result in plantar fasciitis or other guarding injury, such as knee problems. Alternatively, the muscle damage itself could result in weakness, leading directly to damaging body movement malfunctioning.

Of course, the fact that some people on Lipitor have plantar fasciitis does not prove a cause and effect relationship.

If such people stop taking Lipitor and the problem disappears, that would support such a proposal. However, the problem with plantar fasciitis, as I discovered, is that once triggered, the removal of the triggering event (in my case, replacing arch supports in my running shoes), does not necessarily cure the foot pain. The proprioceptive imbalance is now living a life of it’s own.

We have much to learn about this condition, but if anyone out there has plantar fasciitis AND they’re on statins, we would sure like to know if they observed a relationship between the two.

More research is needed. For information on our ongoing research program, read our Plantar Fasciitis Research Newsletter. You can sign up at this link, if you so desire and, better still, tell us your plantar fasciitis story to add to our database, at FitOldDog’s Dynamic Plantar Fasciitis Treatment Facebook Page.

 Important Note: These posts do not provide medical advice. You should always consult your physician before undertaking or significantly modifying an exercise program.

Copyright © 2010 Kevin T. Morgan aka FitOldDog, Old Dogs in Training, LLC.

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