Looked it up on Wiki yesterday - seems it might NOT be an infection, but a progressive deterioration.
Even more scary. Get a good orthopedist and go from there.
Enlist the help of a podiatrist. Feet are complicated and require specialized attention, and chiropractors are mostly quacks anyway.
For pain relief, keep a couple bottles of water in the freezer. Gently roll one under your affected foot for ten minutes or so; the cold helps the inflammation and the rolling helps provide a gentle stretch. If your pain responds well to acetaminophen and ibuprofen or naproxen, great. Otherwise, talk to your medical provider (podiatrist or MD, not a chiropractor) about other options: there’s a lot of different NSAIDs out there that can help.
Some people have great luck with night splints but others can’t tolerate them. Some people have great luck with custom or high-end orthotics; others don’t see the difference between good shoes with or without inserts.
Stretching will help to some degree, but it takes lots of patience and you must continue to do so religiously.
You need to wear good shoes, which sometimes aren’t shoes that feel most comfortable in the store. This is another part where the podiatrist comes in: s/he can look at your foot and your gait and tell you what you should be looking for both in shoes and/or inserts.
In addition to all the other things people have said, rolling the affected foot around on a tennis ball was helpful for me.
I’m not sure how thisworks, apparently snapping the ligament completely takes the pain away, I’m not sure what’s then required to fix it.
I had it too. Both feet at once.
The key things were to wear shoes and to do foot exercises.
Had it for a few years back in the 90s. I had custom orthotics, did stretches 4 times a day, iced my foot, had cortisone shots once or twice a year, had 2 splint boots, one for day and one to sleep in. I finally had surgery which worked, but took about a year to recover completely.
- Go to a real actual doctor who has graduated from Med School. A podiatrist, for instance.
My wife had what we called a “bone spur” in her heel when we were in Malaysia. She had it x-rayed at a hospital, and was told that it would likely resolve itself and they rarely surgically intervene for them, meanwhile, use a palliative insole insert. . In Indonesia, the landlady called in a “dukun” ( witch doctor for lack of a better word), who carried out various seemingly unrelated procedures (like spitting out the window three times), which may or may not have had any effect, but it went away in a few weeks.
I’ve been dealing with it for the last few months - I was running and got my distance up to 5 miles and then it happened. I haven’t really run since. It sucks. I’ve had a little (I stress little) success with stretches and sleep socks.
I have it, like I griped about in mini-rants. It’s been going on for six months to a year, and I finally got serious and went to an orthopaedic/sports doctor last week. She said that the fascia tissue can’t begin to heal one brings down the inflammation. Inflammation is quelled by stretching, icing, NSAIDs and physical therapy.
She’s having me really do the icing and stretching, instead of the half-assed routine I was doing, and prescribed me a topical NSAID because ibuprofen burns a hole in my stomach lining.
The topical analgesic smells ooky, and it’s gross to have it on the bottoms of your feet.
I just got off the phone with a physical therapist, and I start October 3 with the electro-stimulation and whatever other things that they do to try to reduce inflammation. Boy, a lot of physical therapy places look ass-pants at you if all you have is an HMO. They don’t like them at all.
I think I caused the PF myself by jogging in place in the mornings in our garage while wearing bedroom slippers. On cement. Stupid teela.
I had it 20 or so years ago. Stretching, ice, heat, etc; nothing seemed to help. I remember being reluctant to sit down in the evening, knowing how much pain I’d eventually be in walking to bed. After close to a year it just went away and hasn’t recurred.
Looks like all the bases havd been covered here so I don’t have much to add. Some people I’ve met choose to wear their shoes almost always, like around the house and some even to sleep.
I’ve contemplated wearing my orthopaedic flip-flops in the shower, because ten minutes of standing on hard porcelain is murderous on my feet.
I’ve had plantar fasciitis for most of my life. The first bout was really bad-- I couldn’t stand up or walk for very long at all, a couple of minutes at most, and my face would go white from pain-- and it took four years to go away. Maybe longer. If I take good care of my feet, like wearing supportive shoes with orthotics, not running, not spending too much time standing up, and not carrying too much weight, I’m generally fine, but if not, I get relapses with varying degrees of severity.
Here is the list of things that help me:
Wearing shoes that support my feet.
Severely rationing how much time I spend on my feet. Walking is better than standing, and running is the worst.
Taping my feet.
Icing my feet.
Foot stretches/exercise.
Going see an orthopedist. GO SEE AN ORTHOPEDIST. They will get you…
Orthotics
Physical therapy
Anti-inflammatory drugs.
Have a bath instead. Raising your feet helps too.
Got good walking shoes with solid arch inserts. Bought Dansko clogs to wear around the house. Stretched feet before getting up in the morning. Now I only have problems if I spend almost the whole day barefoot on a wood floor.
I’ll chime in one more time just to say why I opted for just changing all my shoes eventually - staying off my feet is not an option. I walk to work, the store, everywhere, and I am on my feet for my job so going the proper shoe route was paramount to healing.
What everyone else has said, lots of stretching, ice, and Ibuprofen with minimal walking for a while, plus new shoes.
These:
with these inserts:
You should get a second opinion. After pretty bad foot pain a family member was diagnosed with it by her GP. None of the GP’s advice helped (shoes, braces etc), and the pain went on for a year. Then another doctor realized she had a severe vitamin D deficiency and treated her with 50k doses of vitamin D for a few months, and magically the foot pain went away along with some other issues.
Had one case a while back. Finally wound up getting a cortisone injection which hurt like bloody hell but cleared it right up. Since then, I’m careful to stretch and I usethis little guy on a regular basis. For such a low tech device, it really makes my feet feel good.