Foot Health Plantar Flexion

Question: When you ask a patient to plantar flex a foot, what changes occur within the muscles involved? Answer: Introduction The plantar flexion is the term associated with the movement of the foot. In this movement generally, the ankle of the foot is to be bent. When a patient is generally asked to plantar flex the foot, at that time the posture is to be taken. Then the patient is made to stand like pushing the gas pedal of the vehicle (Cherry et al., 2014). At that movement, the patient goes through a plantar flexion. With the bending of the foot, the ankle muscles and the calf of the foot gets relaxed to make a proper movement. That is the reason the movement through plantar flexion is the process of toe movement. By the process of plantar flexion, the toe is pointed towards the downward direction by making the extension or straightening of the ankle (Hesteret al., 2013). Movement Through the Plantar Flexion With the movement through the plantar flexion, the muscle that gets affected is the plantar flexor muscles. These plantar flexor muscles include the gastrocnemius, soleus, tibialis posterior, flexor hallucislongus, flexor digitorumlongus, peroneus long and peroneus brevis. All these muscles get relaxed with the action of plantar flexion. Along with that out of these muscles, the three main muscles that get relaxed are the tibialis posterior, flexor hallucis longus and flexor digitorum longus. With this action, the patients feel the change with movement of the muscles (Morrison Ferrari, 2015). While moving the heel and toe during movement the changes in the contraction of the gastrocnemius. This issue within the patients occurs due to the immobilization just because of loss of muscle force. The loss of muscle force is due to the loss of muscle mass within the body. And the process of muscle contraction needed in the plantar flexion is basically based upon the muscle proteins that make the sliding to initiate the movement of the muscles. Therefore the basic behind the plantar flexion is the sliding filament theory (Perrin et al., 2015). Actin and Myosin As per the concept of this theory, there are two filaments known as actin and myosin within the muscle fibres which work together for the generation of contraction. In this process the thin filaments actin slide past the thick filaments by remaining in a constant length. It afterward forms a bridge by making a protein complex that will make contraction easier. This protein complex formed by the molecular mechanism of sliding filament and is known as the actomyosin complex (Morrison Ferrari, 2015). This complex is formed through the attachment of the head of the myosin upon the actin filament. With the result of which there occurs the formation of the cross bridge in between the two filaments that enable the muscle contraction. Figure 1: Relaxation and Contraction Source: (Hesteret al., 2013) Therefore the sliding filament is a process which basically related to muscle contraction, not with the plantar flexion (Hesteret al., 2013). Still, it has contribution during the functioning of plantar flexion. It is because while the movement of ankle joints during plantar these muscles contribute their part and get affected. At that time the muscles involved in this process undergo contraction through the sliding filament. Therefore it is clear that when the patient is asked to plantar flex the foot at that time the contraction and relaxation of the muscles occur by the result of sliding filaments present within the muscles. References Cherry, L.S., Merriman, R., Barnard, P., Beevor, C., Bowen, G. and Hull, R., 2014. 127. Improving Patient Foot Health Care Through Audit and Service Evaluation: One-Year Outcomes of Regional Service Development Programme. Rheumatology, 53(suppl 1), pp.i107-i108. Hester, P.Y., Enneking, S.A., Jefferson-Moore, K.Y., Einstein, M.E., Cheng, H.W. and Rubin, D.A., 2013. The effect of perches in cages during pullet rearing and egg laying on hen performance, foot health, and plumage. Poultry science, 92(2), pp.310-320. Morrison, S.C. and Ferrari, J., 2015. Self-reporting on foot health status in children. Journal of Foot and Ankle Research, 8(2), p.O29. Perrin, B., Allen, P., Skinner, I., Gardner, M., Chappell, A., Phillips, B., Massey, C. and Skinner, T., 2015. The foot-health of adult diabetics in regional Australia: baseline findings from an epidemiological study. Journal of Foot and Ankle Research, 8.