I can always count on The Dope. Smartest, Hippest People on the Web.
I’m having remarkable success with cold beer cans. I drain one into the upper talk-hole about every 6-8 minutes for a couple hours every night.
No pain for the rest of the day!
Or even better, some kind of shoe with actual arch support. The specific choice will depend on your individual foot architecture, but many people find, say, Birkenstock sandals to be helpful as house slippers. Myself, I rotate various shoes/sandals/slippers depending on my feet; I swear they have moods!
My wife says the shot was 4 on that scale, and they gave her a topical numbing agent to help. And the pain went away in a few minutes.
But even if the pain of the shot were a lot worse, if it permanently gets rid of the PF pain you have every day isn’t it worth it? No more messing around with special shoes, orthotics, or exercises, just one or two shots and no more pain. Ever!
I just don’t understand the resistance to getting a shot. (My stepmother has resisted getting one, too, despite our urging.) Put up with a little brief jab and soreness to end lots of serious persistent pain that limits your ability to move. It’s a total no-brainer to me.
My wife was told that one or two steroid shots will permanently cure the vast majority of PF sufferers.
Thanks for the morning chuckle!
Gotta have good arch support. I use WalkFit orthotics in shoes that don’t already have good support, Orthofeet house slippers, and Klogs shoes. All the time. The only time I don’t have them on is in bed or the shower. And very-rarely, dress shoes.
I have not had any problems since I started wearing these. I needed no medical interventions.
I had PF a few years ago. I was rolling a frozen water bottle under my foot for a few weeks. When I finally got to the Doctor, he noticed I was wearing cross trainers. He suggested that I wear my cowboy boots instead. The higher heel would stretch out the arch. It worked.
For me the steroid shot was an 8 on the pain scale and did not resolve the problem.
What did work for me was using the nobby ball that Eva Luna suggested multiple times a day. It is still not 100% but much more tolerable now.
My Pleasure. No, really. 
I’ve got a pair of the most awesome Tony Lama’s. If I thought I could still get them on and off, I’d be in them in a heartbeat.
I think I’m gonna just get into my Salomon SX-91 Equipes and wait for the snow.
The shot isn’t bad. I have seriously jacked-up feet from ballet when I was young. Even the doctor says ‘ewww’ when he looks at them. I have a few episodes of PF and heel spurs. No gout, yet. Plus I am diabetic. So the foot doctor is my best friend. Take the shots, go home and drink beer with your foot up. Next day you’ll be cured, I’ll bet.
It seems to be getting “less bad” as the days go by. I just keep walkin’ on it (not much choice, really), but have avoided kickstarting motorcycles and splitting logs.
So, it’s not too bad, but it is denting my style.
For me, wearing the foot splint overnight solved the nearly year-long problem within a few weeks. Of course, it could be that the disease had simply run its course at the same time I started wearing the foot splint. But it’s a low-cost option with no real down-side to implement, so it’s worth giving it a try.
[anecdote] I’ve had two bouts of PF. During the first episode I did all the different stretching exercises, the rolling pin thing, etc. I bought better shoes. The episode lasted 4-6 months.
My second episode happened about 12 years later. Remembering how long the first episode lasted despite all my efforts to curtail it, I just “grinned and beared” it. I was back to normal in a little under 3 weeks. [/anecdote]
I would love to see a study comparing the duration of symptoms in people who do various therapies vs those who just wait out the situation.
I was diagnosed with PF just last week. Went to an orthopedic clinic in the area because that’s what I suspected it was, and I was very impressed with how they did things there: efficient, thorough, friendly, and thorough (did I mention thorough?).
Ice was strongly recommended as a remedy for the pain (and for me, it works very well), and the frozen bottle of water trick was mentioned as well.
I was given a pamphlet with several stretches to do: calf stretch against the wall (straight leg and bent knee), pulling on the foot with a towel (although I can reach with my hand), and basically bending my toes back. 3 sets of each for 30 seconds each, 3x a day. It’s a lot.
Also, no walking or more heavy impact exercise, and I was told to wear shoes all the time instead of barefoot or slippers at home. And Superfeet in the shoes.
I did get in to see them within a week of pain symptoms, which is pretty early, and now my pain is already almost gone. I’ll be doing the stretches for quite a while, though, to make sure it stays gone.
The nurse told me that they tend not to recommend the steroid shots anymore, especially not at first, because they have a better than 95% success rate at treating PF with just the stuff I mentioned.
I’ve had Plantar Faciitis. It majorly sucks.
I can recommend the exercises and OTC shoe orthotics that have already been mentioned.
HOWEVER, I will say that in my experience, PF is caused by some sort of imbalance in the structure of the body. In my case, it was a symptom of my right hip slowly tearing itself apart. The resulting labral cartilage damage made my hips go out of alignment and cause PF in my right foot. I ended up having to have hip replacement surgery because eventually my right hip was so damaged and full of arthritis I could hardly walk without pain going down my leg and into my foot. It took over 13 years, but now that everything it back in structural balance, I no longer have PF.
So I heartily recommend the exercises, therapy and orthotics mentioned above, but I also recommend looking to see if there is something else that is causing that structural imbalance.
Well, you can lay people too 
(maybe limit it to one or two… and make sure they give good foot rubs).
I’ve had PF off and on for many years. A steroid injection into the heel works wonders, while hurting like a &^%#.
What finally did it for me - after years of it recurring - was wearing a boot at night. It had inflatable bits that helped keep the foot flexed at the ankle; that kept the fascia stretched so it couldn’t “heal” overnight. I had this one(I think), though there are many alternatives. The hassle with that particular one is that I had to remember to deflate (or remove) it if I needed to get up to use the bathroom; I don’t know if others are better for that.
Yeah, “heal” is actually a bad thing. Supposedly the pain when you’re first starting to walk, that goes away after a few steps, is because the foot relaxes and the damaged fascia starts to heal too tightly, and the walking basically restretches / re-injures it.
So I’d hobble like a 100-year-old person with balance issues for a few steps, then be okay until I’d done a lot of walking, at which point I’d be in agony all over again. Then I’d sit and rest… lather, rinse, repeat.