Plantar fasciitis is heel pain caused by inflammation of the “plantar fascia” that connects your heel to your toes on the bottom of your foot. It can be excruciating. It feels like the heel is bruised when you walk on it and you want to find some way to cushion it and baby it. I am saying that although it feels like a bruise, it doesn’t act like a bruise and isn’t a bruise.
Now, you can really bruise your heel. If the heel gets smashed or you jump from a height and land hard on your heel, it can bruise. This involves blood vessels breaking and blood flowing under the skin causing a typical bruise. I’m not talking about that. I am talking about heel pain caused by your muscles pulling the ligaments tight around your heel. You should see a podiatrist if you are not sure if you have a real bruise or plantar fasciitis.
For me, when I get it, it feels like a bruise, but I can make the “bruise” pain go away, sometimes almost immediately.
Not everyone knows what plantar fasciitis is. I was once denied health insurance because I said I had had plantar fasciitis recently. I guess it sounds scary and I found myself shouting over the phone “it’s just heel pain,” but to no avail. I had to go on my previous wife’s insurance who had a type of Leukemia as a preexisting condition.
I like to run. I had run cross country in college one year and despite getting shin splints, I developed a lifelong love of running. Later as an older guy with a desk job computer programming and running at lunch, I developed what appeared to be a bruise on one of my heels. It was painful to walk. I went to a podiatrist to see what the problem was. He told me I had plantar fasciitis. He recommended new shoes. Maybe he recommended stretching, but I mostly remember him having researched running shoes and could recommend the best shoe for my type of pronation. I never quite understood pronation. I focused on the shoes. They seemed like they would cushion the bruise. They were cushiony. It seemed to work.
Later on in life I continued to periodically get the heel pain, despite the shoes, and somewhere, somehow, I read or someone told me that the pain was caused by tightness in the ligament going over the heel, and that stretching the ligament could relieve the pain. I had also heard that stretching all up and down the leg could help with the back pain and spasms that I would periodically get (mostly due to stress). Now that I am retired, about 70 years old and running 5 miles two or three times a week, I no longer get back spasms (the back “going out”), but I still occasionally get heel pain.
The thing to realize first is that plantar fasciitis is NOT a bruise. It feels like a bruise. It feels painful to walk on hard surfaces. Just a few days ago after mentioning the plantar fasciitis to my general practitioner doctor as one of my issues but also saying that it was no problem and I knew how to take care of it, she asked what type of flooring was in my house. Concrete, I said. She obviously felt I was walking on a bruise and softer flooring would help. She recommended cushiony shoes. “Cushiony” helps, but it’s not the solution.
Plantar fasciitis appears to be caused, at least in my case, when your leg muscles, probably the calf muscles and maybe farther on up, tighten up. In my case they can tighten up after a run as the muscles recover and rebuild. I sometimes get up in the night for a bathroom break after a day with a long run and find myself hobbling barefoot over the floor in excrutiating pain like there is a bruise on my heel. On some occasions, both heels.
To relieve the pain, I stretch. The primary stretch is for the calf muscles, but you also want to do stretches on everything else above to relieve additional pull on the calves. The stretching can and should be gentle. You don’t want new problems due to overstretching.
Whenever I feel the heel pain, I lean against a wall with both hands, arms outstretched, one leg back (the one that hurts), one leg forward and bent to allow the lean. Then lean farther into the wall by bending at the elbows and gently stretching the calf of the leg that’s back. For good measure, I reverse the legs to do the other side even if it isn’t hurting. After doing that as much as you can, do some basic toe touches with straight legs (or bent knees if necessary), concentrating on gently stretching out legs and back or anything that can pull on the legs. Don’t overdo it. If it hurts in a bad way, stop.
For a mild case, this stretching can make the pain disappear or greatly diminish. What kind of bruise disappears after a little gentle stretching? For worse cases, I can relieve the pain enough to walk and I continue doing the stretches throughout the day and the pain usually disappears altogether.
I don’t always get heel pain after running. Actually it’s fairly rare. But if I haven’t run for a while or I change my distance or push it such that my muscles take notice and try to grow, I get stiff and the pain recurs. But now I know it isn’t a bruise and I can make it go away with gentle stretching. It can take awhile if the muscles are really tight, but it WILL go away.
You have to believe it isn’t a bruise and that stretching is the solution. One quick stretch won’t fix it. Keep stretching and gently stretch throughout the day until the pain goes away or subsides enough. It can go away on its own, but if you keep exercising, you probably have to keep stretching.
You might find that you stretched and nothing got better. You probably just haven’t stretched long or often enough. Don’t over do it, but it can take awhile for the muscles to loosen and let up the pressure on the heel. Your only hope for quick pain relief is to believe in the stretching and know that it will do the trick eventually.
This is what works for me. It is probably not for everybody. I hope it works for you.