You jump out of bed in the morning and, instead of soft carpet greeting your feet, you feel as if you’ve stepped onto a bed of nails or hot coals. This type of searing or burning pain across the soles of your feet and in your heels is the hallmark of a condition called plantar fasciitis.
To help you avoid the highly uncomfortable symptoms that often accompany plantar fasciitis, the team here at Neuhaus Foot and Ankle pulled together a few tips that you can do at home.
Before we get into some great tips for relieving your plantar fasciitis pain, it’s helpful to review why the pain develops in the first place.
Your plantar fascia is a tough band of connective tissue that stretches from the base of your toes to your heels to provide support for the arches in your feet.
When this tissue becomes irritated or inflamed (usually due to overuse, strain, or injury), it can tighten, especially if you’re off your feet for prolonged periods, such as when you sleep. When you apply pressure to your plantar fascia again, the connective fibers suddenly stretch out and the inflamed and tight tissue cause searing pain.
While the pain tends to flare as we’ve just described, plantar fasciitis symptoms can limit you throughout the day if the tissue isn’t allowed time to heal.
One of the best ways to counter plantar fasciitis pain and improve the health of this connective tissue is through stretching and strengthening exercises.
If you take just a few minutes each day to practice these exercises, you’ll be rewarded with pain-free movement in no time.
To get you started, here are a few effective exercises:
Stand facing a wall and put your hands against the surface. Then, place one leg about two feet back and keep your knee from bending. Bend the knee in the leg closest to the wall, which will stretch the calf muscles in the straight leg (be sure to keep both feet flat on the ground). Hold the stretch for 10 seconds and repeat three times before switching legs.
Grab a ball or a can of soup, sit in a chair, and roll the soles of your feet back and forth over the round object. This exercise is designed to loosen the tissues on the bottom of your feet.
A great tip for this exercise is to use a bottle of frozen water, which can help reduce inflammation in your plantar fascia at the same time as you loosen the tissue.
A great way to strengthen the connective tissues in your feet is to complete dexterity exercises that challenge the muscles in your feet and lower legs. You can accomplish this by sitting in a chair and placing either a towel or a small object on the floor. If it’s a towel, place your toes in the center of the towel and curl your toes so that you’re scrunching the towel. If you’re using a small object, such as a marble, you want to try and pick up the object with your toes.
Repeat this exercise five times for each foot.
Outside of exercising and stretching your feet, you may also benefit from other at-home remedies, including:
We also recommend that you come to see us so that we can tailor a treatment plan that will best suit your needs and provide relief. During your evaluation, we can investigate why you have plantar fasciitis and take steps to not only relieve the current flare-up, but to prevent the condition from developing again down the road.
For experienced help for your plantar fasciitis, please contact one of our locations in Hermitage, Brentwood, Nashville, Mount Juliet, Waverly, Smyrna, Gallatin, Columbia, Pulaski, or Lebanon, Tennessee, to set up an appointment.
