HLST274 Global Health Care Management : Improves Balance Control of He

When you ask a patient to plantar flex a foot, what changes occur within the muscles involved?

Plantar reflexing is a technique that utilizes stimulation in the sole of the foot usually involving a blunt instrument for the stimulation purpose. This reflex technique can be described as a polysynaptic superficial reflex mechanism if the body, which serves the purpose of helping in muscular withdrawal in the body part that, has been stimulated. According to the most of the studies, the entire mechanism of plantar reflex is managed by the spinal cord and the noxious stimulus given to the sole of the foot with a blunt object causes immediate flexion of the toes, ankle, knee, and the hip joints. While administering plantar flexing to a patient care should be taken by the health care professional to ensure that the patient is relaxed before the plantar reflex action is carried out (Schlee, Reckmann and Milani 2012).

Now plantar reflex is undoubtedly one of the most studied reflex systems in the body however, the extent of mechanical changes that occur in the entre procedure is not known completely yet. However with what little information available for plantar reflexing, it can be stated that there is a myriad of different neuro-physiological and muscular changes occurring while the foot is plantar flexed. In order to elaborate more on the same topic, the muscles taht are involved in the entire process include the extensor hallucis longus, tibialis anterior, tensor fasciae latae, hamstring group of muscles, and extensor digitorum longus. Now, there are two different kinds of plantar responses that occur as a result of plantar reflex, normal flexor response and pathologic plantar response which is also known as Babinski’s sign (Muise, Lam and Bent 2012). In case of the normal response, the plantar fixation happens together for foot and toes both. However, in case of the abnormal plantar reflex response the toe response elicitation is acquired from the wrong receptive field. Hence the noxious stimuli to the sole of the foot excite the great toe and thus the wrong toe is extended instead of a normal flexor response.  In this case an additional phenomenon which is characteristics of the abnormal response, the abnormal response recruits an extensor hallucus longus muscle, which empowers the toe flexor for the abnormal response to be facilitated (Kelly et al. 2012).

Another important phenomenon that occurs during the abnormal plantar flexing, the corticospinal tract facilitates a segmental reflex that occurs in the spinal cord. And in case the spinal cord function is optimal in case of the patient it will generate normal response. If the functionality of the spinal cord in reduced from the optimal level, the receptive field of the normal toe extensor reflex site enlarges and in turn the toe flexion is enlarged as well (Futagi, Toribe and Suzuki 2012). Therefore, it can be stated that a significantly extensive neuro-physiological functions and elements are associated with the entire process of plantar flexion, and with more extensive research the key neurological triggers can be discovered as well.

References:

Futagi, Y., Toribe, Y. and Suzuki, Y., 2012. The grasp reflex and moro reflex in infants: hierarchy of primitive reflex responses. International journal of pediatrics, 2012.

Kelly, L.A., Kuitunen, S., Racinais, S. and Cresswell, A.G., 2012. Recruitment of the plantar intrinsic foot muscles with increasing postural demand. Clinical Biomechanics, 27(1), pp.46-51. 

Muise, S.B., Lam, C.K. and Bent, L.R., 2012. Reduced input from foot sole skin through cooling differentially modulates the short latency and medium latency vestibular reflex responses to galvanic vestibular stimulation. Experimental brain research, 218(1), pp.63-71.

Schlee, G., Reckmann, D. and Milani, T.L., 2012. Whole body vibration training reduces plantar foot sensitivity but improves balance control of healthy subjects. Neuroscience letters, 506(1), pp.70-73.