How Can I Get Rid of Plantar Fasciitis?
What is Plantar Fasciitis?
Plantar Fasciitis is the most common cause of heel pain.
It’s that stabbing, cripplingly sharp pain in the bottom of your heel that causes you to hobble when you get up in the morning.
Normally after a few minutes the pain will subside only to return with a vengeance later in the day.
It is a widely held believe that plantar fasciitis if left alone will heal itself after 6-18 months, but theft is we see people who’ve had plantar fasciitis for years!
Podiatrists are the best equipped health professionals to treat plantar fasciitis.
Our big goal is to get you pain free and functioning back at your best.
In this article you will find basic information on the condition as well as how we go about treating plantar fasciitis at Dynamic Podiatry.
The plantar fascia is a thick band of connective tissue that runs underneath the foot from the heel bone (calcaneus) to the ball of the foot (metatarsal heads). It can be seen in most feet when pulling the big toe toe upwards and observing under the arch of the foot.
Heel Pain Basics
There is no specific cause of plantar fasciitis, however, having the following risk factors may increase your chances of getting the condition:
- Wearing non-supportive footwear,
- excessive weight-bearing at work or home,
- decreased joint range of motion,
- being over-weight.
- having flat or high arched feet.
Digging Deeper into Heel Pain
It often takes some detective work to find out how the condition began, even one afternoon of moving furniture or standing around all day at a BBQ can overuse the plantar fascia.
Or maybe it is something you do everyday such as walking from work to the train station in the wrong shoes
.Either way, once we find out what led to the condition, we can treat it more effectively.
The Good News
Some of the initial steps to treating plantar fasciitis the condition include:
- taping to offload the plantar fascia,
- ensuring you have supportive footwear
- icing,
- massage
- calf stretches
Bring Out The Big Guns
If these treatments are ineffective or the pain is too severe, custom foot orthotics made using a 3D laser scanner are designed specifically for your feet.
This type of orthotic will help to spread the load much more evenly over your feet, relieving stress from the heel.
They also address any biomechanical issues that your feet may have, like bunions, or other joint problems
To make sure we design the perfect orthotics for you we use a treadmill with a force plate in side which tells us exactly how much pressure is going through you feet at any time, so that we can reduce the stress on your heels.
