Plantar fasciitis

There are some standard things to try for PF. I have had a couple of bouts of PF and these worked for me. Other people have a lot of trouble getting rid of it. A stretching exercise bending your big toe back is good, you can also achieve this against a wall (big toe wall stretch). Rolling the sole of your foot on a tennis ball or  a Dixie cup that you fill with water and freeze.

I felt symptoms like that, except it was a really stabbing pain, and I kept training for, and ran in, a half marathon. That was a very bad idea. I had a lot of exercises, a leg brace for sleeping, nitroglycerin patches, and probably some other things I’m forgetting. I don’t know if they worked or if they just passed the time while I healed.

I’ve been seeing a podiatrist for years.  The first doc I saw wanted to do surgery. The second and current doc said stretching and massage helps but won’t solve (my) problem.  Custom orthotics, on the other hand have been a godsend.  Bonus it’s allowed me to wear looser fitting shoes and still have the stability I need.

That ABC exercise helps me with lots of foot and achilles problems. You make the alphabet in the air with your toes. I also like to spread my toes out and also pick up things with them as simple exercises.

Hi Jerry,

I’m sorry to hear that.  I’ve had it a couple of times.  For me, it was a combination of things that worked.  I got most of these from my physical therapist.  They’re all based on the idea that a tight calf muscle pulls on your plantar fascia, causing that inflammation and pain.  Using a heel pad to raise your heel in the shoe, or using shoes with a substantial heel drop, will help relieve that pulling off the bat.  Then you need to heal, then work on relaxing and stretching those calf muscles.

• wearing a PF “boot” at night to keep the foot flexed and keep the calf muscle from shortening overnight
• calf stretching before you get out of bed in the morning – cross foot over opposite knee and pull toes up towards you with your hand
• don’t go unshod around the house while recovering – that first step out of bed in the morning can hurt it!
• Do calf stretches, starting by leaning in to a wall, work up to pushing foot against a vertical wall and straightening leg, then most extreme stretch was dropping one heel off the back of a step and use your weight on the straightened leg to stretch calf for 30-60 seconds on each leg.  Don’t do that last one until you’re getting along in recovery, start off with the more gentle ones.
• Stretch before and after any exercise.
• Use heating pad or warm up on exercise bike before exercise (i.e. walking), ice afterwards.

I also stayed away from zero drop shoes, and used a shoe with 10mm heel to toe drop.  A heel insert or green Superfeet insoles can help.

I still try to stretch before and after my daily hikes, which has kept both PF and my Achilles tendon problems away the past few years.  The tight calf muscles caused both for me, it seems.

Good luck!

I had bad heel pain 2 years ago. First I went to Dick’s Sporting Goods and bought 3 different gel inserts…no improvement. Then I visited the Good Feet Store and purchased their medium lift arch supports. They try to sell you all 3 lifts at first but when they see you’re ready to walk out over the exorbitant price they tell you that you can get by with just the mediums. The supports cured me about 90%. I still do slow (deep) stretches on stairs as well.

Double up on your collagen peptides. That seemed to help. Also massaging the fascia and stretching calves, of course. It took about three months for mine to fully recover.

Soft connective tissue injuries are the worst!

thanks, good ideas, I thought this would be a common problem

I think I’ve had this for years but it’s never prevented me from doing anything

I’ll try some of those

The Good Feet Store runs commercials endlessly for orthotics.  Those are definitely happy people in their commercials.

Stretches as mentioned.   Best thing I got was advice from a doctor.  I forget if it was my PCP or my podiatrist (I have multiple issues with my feet).  I was told to get on Amazon and find a “night splint for plantar fasciitis”.   I wore that every night for a week and was almost cleared up.   I wore it another week and have had (so far, knock on wood) no recurrence.

Additional, I have worn doctor fitted orthotics for 30 years.  I got PF even with long term wearing of them.  If you believe you would benefit with orthotics, go see a podiatrist.

Yep I have dealt with this too and there is a lot of advice here that resonates for me but dk’s post is basically what my PT had me do except my problem started in my hamstrings and worked down. The whole back of my leg is tight and that terminates in the PF. You want to decrease tension by lengthening the back of the leg.

For me the biggest difference was made by going back to shoes that have some drop (Brooks Cascadias).

YMMV!

I had a bout years ago. You really don’t want to play around with this. If it gets worse, it can be a long road getting rid of it. Custom orthotics might help. They take an impression of your feet and mold an orthotic from that. These will last for nearly forever.

I like to roll a can or ball gently under my feet when sitting and reading, as a preventive action. Stretches including the ABCs are good too, or anything a good PT recommends. Rest might be indicated until the condition has resolved. Rest, as in, taking it easy. Good luck!! My episode was more extreme than yours, it sounds like, and again it took some time to resolve. As in, months. Best wishes Jerry!

My particular problem is that I overpronate. The problem arose when I went to the tropics and basically wore flip flops or was barefoot for weeks. My symptoms were upon waking, extreme pain for the first half dozen steps or so and then it would subside. My Podiatrist said that it was a common problem called Flip-Flop Foot. Walking barefoot without arch support strained my tendon. The immediate solution was custom inserts, and after that switching to running shoes designed for overpronation. Heading back to the tropics soon and I need to order special sandals for PF. Best of luck.

In my case, my PF was due to an injury. I knew it the instant that it happened, and I could barely walk for a couple of days. Lots of collagen, stretching, massage, and time cured it 100%.

If you have chronic PF, then something is irritating the fascia. In that case, you have to figure out what is doing the damage and eliminate it. There are good suggestions in this thread: arch supports, orthotics, stretching, and maybe not low-drop shoes, at least until you can get accustomed to them.

It is possible that transitioning to low-drop over time could help, as well. In that case, you might try wearing low-drop shoes at home, and switching to something more traditional for the trail?

Are you sure that your heel pain is caused by the fascia? If it is just heel pain, then there could be another cause. Do you get the same pain when wearing high-stack, more robust, shoes or boots?

I had some PF issues years back and tried the inserts, stretching, rolling the bottom of my foot across a tennis ball and zero drop shoes. That helped, but just a little and only temporarily. Then I saw a video where a guy suggested to feel up your achilleas tendon towards your calf and try to find a knot. Once you find it, massage it out. It hurt, but it did the trick. About a year later my wife said she was having PF issues. I found a knot on her achilleas and massaged it out. She punched because she said it hurt when I did that, but later admitted that helped tremendously. So, I finished her massage and her PF issues went away. Definitely worth a try.

Did she punch you the second time? :)

I’ll have to look for that

The problem is deeper than you think.

Temporary expedients relieve symptoms but do not resolve root causes.

Do the 2-week carbohydrate intolerance test as described by Maffetone (here: https://philmaffetone.com/2-week-test/) and the problem will go away. Forever.

I have suffered with recurring PF for decades.  My PT’s advice is summed up nicely in dk’s post and that helped, but it was always there and would flare-up regularly.   I eventually had PRP injections and after that, the exercises worked very well and for the first time in a very long time, I am pain free.

Subsequent to my comment above, a sincere individual asked me privately, “While I agree that insulin resistance causes most of the conditions that kill us, it isn’t immediately obvious why you would connect it to plantar fasciitis?” He suggested that I post my responses for the benefit of the general audience, which I now do so below. For any private questions I can be reached at atif@ethica.institute:

That is a good question. And I myself do not know why.

This is my guess: our bodies are awash in inflammation from too much sugar in our diets, sometimes manifest in the drying out and sticky-ing up of our joints, here as plantar fasciitis. Removing carbohydrates almost entirely for 2 weeks clears up this inflammation and forces our bodies to burn fat rather than glucose for energy, how we were naturally designed to function. The science is explained by Dr. Shanahan in Deep Nutrition.

I made the link quite by accident: I performed the 2 week Maffetone test about 20 years ago because I had decided to make the switch to low carb eating. About 5 days into the two weeks my knee and foot pain completely disappeared, seemingly quite miraculously because I had been trying for years to attenuate the pain somehow, trying many of the things the other interlocutors had recommended. So I cannot say that the link between insulin resistance and plantar fasciitis is causal, but I can say from experiencing it personally, that for me it had been correlative.

Jerry, your issue could be caused by eating too many peanuts. Hence, Planter’s fasciitis.

ha, ha, ha,…

No, I have plantars fasciitis

I like peanuts though so maybe…

Jerry, after battling PF for over 25 years and trying many of the suggestions posted here, I found a great PT who turned me on to the eccentric heel drop excercise. Lots of info on google. I haven’t had a flare-up in over 8 years now. Good luck.

Yeah, that’s sort of what I do just hiking along.  Whenever I start feeling a little pain.

Maybe what it’s doing is stretching the calf muscle.

I find that exercise odd but not eccentric…

(sorry).

Jerry, As a past sufferer of diagnosed Planter Fasciitis, I would recommend that you get a physical therapist who can use the Graston Technique on your foot. They rub a metal tool on the bottom of your foot in a certain way. I wouldn’t say it hurts, but it is uncomfortable. But it works like magic. I went through this in the Fall of 2022 and it has not come back since.

I went to a podiatrist at a local orthopedic place. He did xrays and ultrasound to see if there was some physical damage–there wasn’t. He recommended buying some (expensive) shoe inserts (but when he looked inside my Oboz shoes, he remarked that they already had a high arch). He also gave me a script for physical therapy (PT) and said to get someone who can do the Graston Technique.

I went to a PT for 15 sessions. She had me do a lot of calf stretches of various methods and after about 4 or 5 visits she started the Graston. I would lie on my stomach while she worked the tool on the sole of my foot for about 5 minutes. I would grit my teeth and hold onto the table while she did it. By the end of the 15 sessions the pain was totally gone, and I’ve been fine ever since.

Personally, I feel like the stretches did nothing to help and the cure was entirely from the Graston. She also had me buy and use this thing you strap to your foot and ankle at night to keep your foot and calf at 90 degrees. Not sure if that helped any, either.

Good luck!