Foot pain is a really common problem! There are a lot of different types of foot pain. Today we’re going to talk about one of the most common causes, plantar fasciitis. Luckily, there are a lot of things you can do at home to help fix this very painful problem.

Plantar fasciitis is a very painful condition of the bottom of your foot. This is pretty easy to diagnose by yourself. You’ll have pain on the bottom of your foot, just in front of your heel to the inside. Usually, you have pain first thing in the morning, or perhaps after you’ve been sitting for a while and get up. The pain is worst after you’ve been resting.

Plantar fasciitis has lots of different potential causes. It’s often a buildup of many things. Common causes are wearing the wrong shoes for too long or taking a long trip with a lot of walking that you weren’t used to. Sometimes it just pops up out of nowhere.

What is actually happening inside the foot? When there is overuse or dysfunction of the foot, the fascia (sheet of connective tissue) on the bottom of the foot gets too tight, and it starts to pull at the attachment site to the heel bone. Then we get a site of inflammation where it gets swollen, angry, and painful.

How do we treat it? The same ways as lots of other tendinitis or bursitis. They are all caused by inflammation in the connective tissue. The first thing we do for plantar fasciitis is to adjust the bones of the foot. Getting those bones in the foot moving properly can help it heal faster and help the function of the foot.

Then we give the patient homework to help the foot calm down, which needs to be followed for at least two weeks, depending on the severity and how long it’s been going on. You have to stay in “calm it down mode” long enough to get ahead of the inflammation.

Here is our favorite homework for feet:

• Stretch before you put your foot on the floor in the morning. As you’re sleeping, your foot naturally curls forward. With plantar fasciitis, if you don’t stretch first, the first step on the floor in the morning, as you stretch the fascia on the bottom of your foot, is very painful and creates even more injury to that area that’s inflamed. So before you get out of bed, stretch the foot. Warm it up by moving it back and forth and around before you put your foot on the floor. Then again stretch several times throughout the day. We carry foot rollers that are the perfect size for rolling the bottom of the foot. They’re great for preventing plantar fasciitis.
• Icing the foot is also important because we need to cool down the inflammation. Use ice for about 20 minutes, two or three times a day. A great way to accomplish the icing of your foot is using a frozen water bottle. Freeze a water bottle and then roll your foot over the frozen water bottle a few times a day. This gets icing and stretching at the same time.
• For those two weeks that you’re in calm-it-down-mode, you only wear comfortable footwear. Skip anything that doesn’t feel good, because you’ve got to get ahead of that inflammation. No worn-out shoes, only supportive and comfortable shoes. Also try to not go barefoot too much during this time. Sometimes barefoot is just too much stress on the plantar fascia while it’s healing.
• Soaking the foot in warm water with Epsom salt for 20 minutes at a time, once a day can also be a way to get ahead of the inflammation.

 An adjustment and a few weeks of home care is often enough to get over plantar fasciitis. If it’s still a persistent issue, then we add acupuncture, or massage therapy.

Plantar fasciitis is one of our favorite things to treat with acupuncture because it’s so effective and responds to quickly. We typically start with four to six treatments at about twice a week. Sometimes it’s gone at this point, and sometimes needs a few more treatments. When it does go away after acupuncture, if often does not come back. Acupuncture actually helps by making your foot stronger from the inside. The acupuncture needles create a micro-trauma to the area, which tells your body there’s something that needs to be healed. The white blood cells are activated to go eat up the inflammatory tissue and create healthy new cells.

Our massage therapists can also help plantar fasciitis with helping to address all of the muscular imbalance of the foot and leg. Massage loosens the tendons, ligaments, and fascia that have become painfully tight over time, relaxing them back into their normal posture. Massage can also break up the scar tissue caused by chronic inflammation and loosen up the fibrous tissue band, allowing it to return to its natural shape.

Another thing that we add with really stubborn cases of plantar fasciitis, is putting the patient in custom orthotics. We offer custom orthotics through our office where you stand on a scanner, and it tells us exactly what’s going on with your feet and where you need support through the three arches of your feet. The orthotics are built to support the arches of your feet, just how you need it. They also provide high tech shock absorption for your feet. Custom orthotics can help prevent recurrence of plantar fasciitis.

Take good care of your feet – they work hard for you!