The Truth About Foot Health: Why Your Foundation Matters with Dr. Emily Splichal

In this episode, we dive into a powerful and often overlooked truth—your health may start from the ground up. Featuring Dr. Emily Splichal, functional podiatrist, human movement specialist, and founder of Naboso Technology, this conversation challenges everything you thought you knew about feet, movement, and longevity.

Dr. Emily explains what it means to treat the body as a fully connected system, where the feet are not just a foundation, but a window into overall health. From chronic foot pain to long-standing movement issues, she shares how traditional approaches often miss the bigger picture—and why her functional and regenerative methods focus on healing the root cause, not just the symptoms.

The discussion explores how disconnection from our bodies, poor movement patterns, and even modern footwear can contribute to chronic pain and dysfunction. Dr. Emily also breaks down her regenerative protocols, including shockwave therapy, injections, and peptides, designed to restore tissue health and improve movement over time.

Beyond treatment, this episode highlights the importance of awareness, body connection, and intentional movement as key drivers of long-term health, performance, and quality of life.

About the Guest: Dr. Emily Splichal is a functional podiatrist, human movement specialist, and founder of Naboso Technology. She is globally recognized for her work in sensory-based movement, foot function, and integrating the nervous system into rehabilitation and performance. Dr. Emily lectures internationally, bridging podiatry with neuroscience, fascia, and human movement.

This episode will change the way you think about your body, your movement, and your path to long-term health.

functional podiatry, foot health, human movement, plantar fasciitis treatment, regenerative medicine, shockwave therapy, peptides for healing, movement therapy, longevity health, holistic healing, Naboso Technology, Dr Emily Splichal

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi, this is Dr. McCole Neely, and thanks for listening to our show. We are here to talk a little bit about mindset, movement, and muscle, and maybe a few other little fun things along the way. Everybody's obsessed with hormones and supplements and longevity. But what if your optimal health actually starts with your feet? I have Dr. Emily Slickle here. Dr. Emily, thank you so much for joining us. Of course. So you are a functional podiatrist. Functional podiatrist and human movement specialist.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

That's amazing. But tell me, what does that mean? Yes. So a functional podiatrist has trained like a traditional podiatrist as a surgeon, orthotic, supportive shoes, all of that. And then really just through my career and my unique perspective of the feet and how it influences movement. A functional podiatrist is one that would look at the whole body as an integrated unit because it is. Our feet are connected to the rest of our body. Foundation. Yes. Our foundation, but they're connected to our pelvic floor, to our diaphragm, actually to our tongue through fascial lines. Interesting. There's a lot of muscle synergies. Our foot is like a window into the rest of our body. So I look at all of my patients moving, functional movement, but then I also factor in stress, sleep, diet, inflammation, really everything that like a functional medicine doctor does. But I'm combining it with the podiatry, which means I'm looking at movement. So really I treat movement, I don't treat feet.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

I preach and preach that movement is medicine. Yep. Muscle is medicine and the key to your longevity. Yep. So I love that. Yes, absolutely. Tell me what it looks like when someone's like seeking you out. What are they coming in complaining about or what are they feeling?

SPEAKER_00 2:11

Yeah, so my my practice is very focused around chronic presentations. Okay. Now the functional podiatry and I also do regenerative podiatry. So I fall into injections, peptides, you happen to mention, all of those modalities to again optimize the tissue to support movement longevity. So most of my patients have a chronic presentation. Like chronic foot pain? Chronic foot pain, a chronic movement disorder, a chronic compensation. Okay. One quick example could be plantar fasciitis, most common presentation in the feet, but they've had it for months and months, maybe several years. They've gone through all the traditional providers and they keep hearing the same thing: orthotics, injections, physical therapy, supportive shoes, stop doing your activity and they still have the pain, which means I'm looking at it from an outside perspective. Oftentimes it's a degeneration or it's a tear in the fascia, which means I have to look at it regeneratively. Once I do my regenerative protocol, it takes three months. Then we bring integrity to the tissue. Then I start to say, well, why did this happen in the first place? And is it something in the more complex movement pattern? Okay. So then you get it moving correctly so it doesn't happen again. Yes. And oftentimes the movement pattern is based off of a disconnection, a lack of awareness, a poor embodiment to our movement, which is my whole other passion, is about being really aware of your body in space, which is called body schema. Most people are just sensorly disconnected from their body. They just don't realize even how they're moving. Yeah, they don't know how they're standing, moving, disconnected from the ground. They're wearing supportive shoes, lots of cushion, never going barefoot. I'm trying to change that.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

That's something I want to get into. Yeah. But back up for a moment. Tell me a little more about this regenerative protocol. Like, let's say I come in, I'm a runner, so I get foot pain sometimes. How are you going to help heal that I've beat up my feet?

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Yes. So the regenerative protocol and the modalities that I believe in are shockwave is one. Okay. So we are essentially prepping the area for, we're just disrupting it. Right. Um, if I could actually step back one, in a lot of chronic tissue injuries like planar fasciitis, planar fasciosis, there is disorganization. So a patient or individual doesn't understand why it's not responding like their neighbors or their sisters or whatnot, right? They're saying, well, they used this. Yeah, they did this. Why is it not helping me? So in a chronic presentation, degeneration, maybe a partial tear, there's it's a chaotic environment of a lot of itty bitty baby blood vessels that start to grow and then they kind of die off. Okay. And then the collagens, all the fibers, are like a little haystack. A lot of them are immature, or they're collagen type three. They're more like scar tissue, we'll just call it. Okay. So it's like a big chaotic haystack. So what we need to do to get that tissue healthy again through this regenerative protocol is first you have to disrupt it. And that's what Shockwave does. Okay, essentially pissing it off.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

You're just like picture haystack, and we're just gonna like blow it up. Yeah, we're blowing it up.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Yeah, so we're doing that. And I have patients do that too. How does shockwave do that? So it's doing it by repeating an injury. So it's creating an injury response. So it's actually it's allowed, just pounding. It can be a painful, yeah. So it's it's sound waves, acoustic waves, which is essentially just irritating the tissue. So it's not super painful to have done. Um so it depends on the type of shockwave. Okay. So the shock wave that I like, I actually want deeper into the tissue. So I would ideally, in a perfect world, block my patients or numb them. Okay. I want to be very aggressive. So before shockwave, there were other modalities where you would actually burn holes in the tissue. Really? Or you would go into the OR and you would just like poke, poke, poke, poke, and you're just literally like I'm trying to re-injure it. Did that work? It works. Okay. Because you But probably pretty painful. What happens is think of healing, and you have to go through all these different phases, right? From one door to the next door to the next door. Oftentimes in chronic tissue injury, you go from one door to the next door, and then that door's stuck, right? Uh-huh. But you can't go to this door till you go through this door. So you literally are like, I'm gonna go to the first door again. Right. So it's trying to heal itself, but it gets keep going. So you need to essentially kind of pull the rug out and say, we're starting over, and now you're going like this again. Okay. Okay. So we are irritating the tissue. That's our shock weight. Then I have patients do, well, I will do the regenerative injections. So the biologics, growth factor injections, Wharton's jelly exosomes. And you're doing that right into the area that's directly into the tissue. Yep. Okay. That will stimulate the repair, stimulate the fibroblasts, and create the scaffolding. Okay. The integrity. So the scaffolding, like the scaffolding of a building, is creating a little bit of the framework, right? So that the fibers have something to be organized around. Exosomes kind of reminding the cells to stay on, and that's kind of where the peptides come in as well. Okay. Is you want the peptides to carry the effect of the injection. Because I do the injection twice. Okay. And then they're doing peptides for two months. Are you using any PRP? So PRP would be like the Wharton's Jelly. So I don't do PRP anymore. I did in the beginning of my practice. And then honestly, part of it is I don't want to do a two-step process when I can do a one-step process. Sure. I don't want to draw the blood. I don't have essential fusion anymore. I would rather, it's just an extra step. So peptides are you using, I ask. So the Wolverine stack. Okay. Yep. BBC 157. Yep. So doing the that stack and I'm carrying it for two months for the patient. Now, during this protocol, which takes three months, I am taking them immobilized. They're in a boot. They're in a bubble. And I tell, I'm just trust me in the process. You are in a bubble while we are doing this. And then I gradually take you out of the bubble. And as I'm gradually taking you out of that immobilization and that support, I'm reintroducing stress. Okay. So this is it's kind of an art in a sense. Medicine is an art. And I tell patients that all the time. It's a science, but it's also an art. Because they'll say, How can I go to 10 podiatrists, let's say, or 10 providers, and they all tell me something different. To a patient, they don't get that. They're like, isn't medicine like you have this, you do this? And it's not that way. It's kind of what's wrong with how medicine is practiced if we're just doing that, because we're all different. Exactly. Everyone is different. Everyone responds a little bit. I'm treating the human. There's a lot of complexity into that. So I make sure that it is just individualized. And we are human, so we are biased. I happen to be biased towards functional and regenerative movements. So to me, that's the lens at which I look at it. Sure. But I was trained as a surgeon. So I get how a surgeon thinks. I was trained to think like that, which is crazy coming out of a medical school. Yeah. And to be like, I know how to think from a surgical lens. I'm not going to fall for that. But I want to prevent surgery. Yes. Because I I know. So I get how a surgeon thinks, but it's just part of the reality of healthcare, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Wow. Wow. So after we've done this three-month program regenerative, is everyone 100%? Or where where do you go from there then?

SPEAKER_00 9:55

Yeah. So what do I tell patients? Because I again am seeing a lot of patients with a myriad of presentations, right? Not everyone is looking the same. So I tell them, if you can get 50% better, right? You're waking up every morning and it's like an eight out of 10. You're like crawling. I actually had a patient that I was on the phone yesterday with her, and she's like, it didn't work. I'm like, okay, let's regroup here. Let's connect. She was like, when it first started, I was an eight out of 10, like crawling out of bed, and it would just follow me and it would just, you know, I'd be hobbling my whole day. Dot, dot, dot. Now, maybe it's like a little annoying when I wake up, but by the time I'm in I make it to the kitchen, boop, it's gone. And I actually don't fill it most days. And then every once in a while it'll be like a three out of 10. If I do too much, I'm like that is technically a success. That's a big difference. That is a big difference. So we are doing like a booster round of it. But I wanted her to realize, and I want all the listeners to realize that the success is relative to where you started. Right. If you have an actual tear in your plant or fascia, I will use these regenerative modalities to get you as close to integrity in that tissue as I can, of course, avoiding surgery. But so we can increase your function and your quality of life. So most days, maybe it's just annoying, but you can still go for that walk. You can play your pickleball if you want every once in a while. I know you're a runner, so you can do some running. Maybe you have to be an orthotics now when you run, but we kind of modify it. So there's a realistic association to that. Sure. What I will say real quick is that in the appropriate patients, which are, you know, I'm kind of screening them out for what their injury is, 90% success rate. 90% I can get down to this 50% improvement. And then of course, some numbers that we do a booster around.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Tell me more then about the movement, because that's really exciting to me. Yes. I know you're passion about movement and getting people to work with the right movement for longevity. Give me how that looks and and what you're passionate about there.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Yes. So when it comes to movement, one, you have to be able to feel your feet. Okay. So put me. Let only fill your feet. Feel your ground, feel the feet. Um, so with that, is are you aware of how you're standing? Are you aware of pressure distribution? Do you actually feel the ground? Like when you walk, do you feel the ground? A lot of people are like, meh, I don't even notice it, which means we strike the ground really hard. We're just disconnected to the impact forces that are coming into the body. And a lot of optimizing human movement and preventing injury like plantar fasciitis is based around our relationship with the ground and with gravity. So the feeling of the feet, to me, it's as simple as taking your shoes off. And we're both here barefoot, but feeling you're pro-barefoot. I am pro-barefoot, very, very pro. Taking your shoes off, taking your socks off, walk around your home outside, like your grass, right? Things like that where you're just feeling and connecting to the subtleties of how your foot moves. That is the first thing. Second one is then I teach people proper foot posture. I teach people how to set their base, how to find their tripod, how to really lengthen their toes. And then most important is how to engage their toes. So the power of the human foot is in our toes. A lot of people are like, oh, the arch, strength, the arch, the ankle. It is the toes. And your toes access how we create stability from our foot to our pelvic floor to our diaphragm. I teach people how to connect your toes to your tongue, which is a fun trick. And that's how we stabilize. And then this is when I'm out of here. Yeah, I know. And then it's how we push off. Okay. So make sure when I like with all my spread and engage and push your toes down. Um, so I teach exercises like forward lean. Forward lean is an exercise where you stand nice and tall, spread your toes, find your tripod. You're imagining you're stiff as a board, stay stiff as a board, and ever so slightly you would lean forward. Now you're not breaking at the hip, but you're literally stiff as a board leaning. Right? Think like a ski jumper. Sure. How they go. But it's a subtle shift. And every time you shift forward, your toes are going to reflexively, don't even have to think about it, reflexively engage into the ground. That is teaching the individual, ah, that's how my toes engage. I call it gripping the ground. Right. So you're gripping, doming, activating. And that is the start to understand how your foot works. Then with with runners, very important, uh, when you're lifting at the gym, when I work with people who have movement disorders and I don't want them to fall, or just anyone in general, every time your toes contract, I need your diaphragm to lift, which means you're exhaling. So toes push down, you would exhale. That's the lift of the diaphragm. And then fascinatingly, when you exhale, something happens to your pelvic floor, and your pelvic floor should lift at the same time. That's stabilizing your pelvis as a structure. And it's technically your posterior pelvic floor. So you will exhale, lift your posterior pelvic floor, which is your elevator ani. So it's like imagining stopping your poo. That's how you do it. You exhale, lift your elevator ani, push your toes into the floor, and you are now fascially stacked. That is how I teach people to stand in gravity. That is how I would teach an athlete who's doing deadlift, squat, jerk, whatever they're doing, you have to access that stabilization pathway in the system because that's how we were designed. What shoes should I be wearing?

SPEAKER_01 15:44

Like as a runner, shoes are important to me, but I love lifting. Obviously, I can't go barefoot into the gym. But what should I be doing then?

SPEAKER_00 15:52

So I like barefoot shoes, minimal shoes. Um, a myriad of brands. I've tried probably every single brand that's out there. A lot of them are great. Um, so I like something that is zero drop, so totally flat, minimal cushion, as flexible. So you want to, a lot of people will show a minimal shoe folded in half. I actually want to twist the shoe. So twist it like a rag. Do you have that amount of flexibility in the shoe? All of that is ideal to allow your foot to move the way it naturally is supposed to. And then you're getting as much sensory information as possible.

unknown 16:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

That's ideal. Now, I still would challenge people to take their shoes off. And I do take my shoes off at the gym. Okay. Knock on wood, have not yelled at yep, but they probably leave me alone. Yes, I'm doing my deadlifts and all of that. So you actually lift barefoot. I lift barefoot, yeah. And I do Olympic lifting styles. Um, and the reason is that when I'm doing the deadlift or the squat, whatever the move is, kettlebells are awesome, barefoot also is your toes, your toes have to engage. I am like gecko'd to the floor when I am doing these lifts, really heavy because that is where your power comes from. And shoes inherently will take some of that away.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Sure. I just yesterday I took a shred class with my mindset coach. She's been on here before. Yeah. And I I vividly remember in class, she says, push down through your toes. Yeah. And it totally changed how I was doing the move. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Like now when you do it, lift elevator an eye.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

All right. Like I'm sitting here doing it. Love it. Well, I love the movement. What else do I need to know about movement? Tell me about. I mean, we've got the pelvic connection, the diaphragm connection. How does the tongue relate to your toes?

SPEAKER_00 17:37

So your tongue is part of your diaphragm. So it's connected. So here's a quick simple stack that the listeners can try. So there's what's called tension in the body, tension, pressure, stiffness. So when you engage your abs, like even here just sitting, when you engage your abs, there is this sensation of tension. Like what'd you call that tension? Yeah. Stiffness. Okay, great. So consider that your tension, feel it, um, give it to a give it a level, hold it. And you want to do the standing. We can't do it seated. So you're standing. It's for the listeners. Engage your abs. Okay, I feel tension. Hold it. Push your toes into the floor. Okay. What happened? Oh, you're going to do it. Okay. Yeah. Push your toes into the floor. With that in, that in, hold it. Now take your hands and make a fist. And every time you do that, you should feel more pressure or stiffness in your abs. Okay. Hold that. Take your tongue and push it into your pellet. So now you should feel this increasing tension or stack. Okay. To appreciate it, stay how you are, relax just your hands, keep everything else. Did you feel like your stiffness went down to your tension? Make a fist again. Now relax just your toes. Keep everything else. Did you feel your tension drop? Now push your toes down again. Your tension should rise. Okay. And then relax. So that yes. So how I would use that with someone, let's say we're at the gym again. Um, let's say we're doing bicep curls. And every time you do the bicep curl, you're pushing your toes into the floor. Let's say we're going to hold the last rep. So now we're doing an isometric and I'm holding here. Well, I don't need to inhale and exhale anymore because it's an isometric. So I'm going to hold this with my toes into the ground and I'm going to take my tongue and push it into my pellet. And I'm going to hold that. It's a different way to access the fascial system. That's an example of how you could do it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

And it's so grounding too. Like I feel like not only am I moving muscles better mentally, like I feel like there's this stress relief.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

No, it is there's a stress relief. You are connected to your body. A lot of the work I do also is um kind of like autism, ADHD spectrum, anxiety, depression, mental health. A lot of that has to do with you feeling connected or not connected to your body. So when we reconnect to our body, it's okay, I'm here, I'm safe. I feel myself, I feel the body, I feel the ground. I work with a lot of cranial sickrels therapists and they do a lot of fill your feet. I feel my feet, I feel my hands, I am here, right? Like they're just kind of reconnecting. So something really powerful with the feet that I feel like my profession is tapping. Like it's just the tip of the iceberg above, and it's so literal when the human body is not not so literal. It's abstract, it's things you can't see or touch. You just have to really feel. And that's why I'm just into sensory, also. It's more about feeling.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

I love it. Like, I there's so much I want to put in place with this. Like, I'm definitely gonna do more barefoot. And even my son is eight, and I'm trying to teach him more with movement. So as he grows, he can just naturally have that. So teaching him some of those exercises, but grounding barefoot, I think is incredible.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

Yep, connect to the toes, crawl, play, move, mess up. Um, I'm very about an awareness of your movement also. Um, so my passion is movement longevity. Yeah. And under movement longevity, which is what we were alluding to, movement longevity, what falls under that is movement accuracy. So are you moving the right way with an awareness of your body? We start to lose movement accuracy when we disconnect from our body. This could be tripping, falling, clumsy, overreaching. That's an inaccuracy of your perception of your body in relation to external objects, right? That's movement accuracy, very important. And then movement efficiency. Movement efficiency is how we dance with the ground and impact forces and energy with every step we take, which is fascial. So they're they're both fascial because they're both sensorial and neurological in the nervous system and how the brain sees. But those components, so yeah, for your kid, you're teaching your child just awareness. Where is he? He learns by messing up. Oopsies, okay. Guess that was not how long my leg was. Gotta do it this way. It's all I love children and playing and falling and messing and the feet are just such a foundation to the whole body. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

Okay, real quick, what is the one bad habit that you would try and get people to stop to keep healthy feet?

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Um, I would say wearing shoes from the moment they wake up to the moment they go down. And this includes house shoes. So I know tile floors, hot, hard, you know, hot surfaces, all of that that people are like, I have to have my house shoes. Yeah. What I try to encourage people is I understand that if you need house shoes, outdoor shoes, but can we find a moment in the day where we are not in our shoes, where you're completely barefoot, you're finding your tripod, you're engaging your toes at a minimum. I tell people 30 minutes a day. Can you do 30 minutes a day of being barefoot? Yeah. That is so small. But there are many people who wear shoes all day, every day from the moment they wake up. So we need to try to get that in.

SPEAKER_01 23:00

I'm on board. Join me. Let's go barefoot. And I have to have you back because there's so much more I want to do. I mean, we should go through a whole exercise session because that's good. Yes, yes, I'm down. Dr. Emily, thank you for your time. It's been amazing talking with you. And hope you all join us being barefoot here soon.