Plantar fasciitis (Read 2599 times)

Things that I did to overcome PF; some combination of this stuff made it go away after a few months:

Fish oil

Stretching before getting out of bed

Taping my foot for extra arch support when running

Rolling a can of frozen OJ under my foot after running

Doing yoga and walking barefoot around the house to strengthen feet- as long as I wasn't in pain at the time

Wearing shoes with good arch support when out of the house

Losing a bit of weight

The Nytimes Well blog did a short article on the science of toning shoes (interesting), but the comments that follow it were perhaps even more interesting. Several people commented that, while doing nothing to tone their backsides, toning shoes helped them to overcome their PF... .very interesting: 

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/can-shoes-really-tone-the-body/?ref=health

For the last few weeks, maybe two months?, I've had heel pain at the medial aspect.  I sometimes feel it while running, late in the run, but just barely.  It's not really that bad in the morning.  I mostly feel it after I run and have sat for a while (like when I stand up in the late morning after sitting at my desk for a few hours).  At that point, I will actually limp some days for a while until it works itself out.    I see a couple of suggestions that I should "work" on it before it gets bad, but I'm not getting a good sense of what 'work' on it means.  Just try different things to see if anything makes it better or worse? And those things are ice, stretching, anti-inflammatories? 

  I mostly wear some kind of Dansko or Keen shoe when not running, barefoot around the house, non-minimal running shoes to run.  I walk a lot - to and from work and around the grounds of my University, between my office in the school and my office in the hospital .... it's probably 5 miles of walking every day.  Can't figure out if that makes things better or worse. 

Newer research is saying manual therapy is the way to go, and that doesn't mean massage only

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21285525

so far (knocking on wood) I've had good (but not perfect) sucess getting back into running after PF and other issues with:

1. using Superfeet inserts for runs

2. wearing flexible shoes like Nike Free for all day wear

3. avoiding hills and speed work

4. doing SoCal Pete's PF excercises 

At least she's entertaining.

and I find her interesting, if not important.

It also helped me to think of PF as a sprain, since that's basically what it is.

After months of wringing my hands and pulling my hair out (attractive!) and reading 5000 different "cures" for PF, I realized the only sure cure is letting it heal. I hate not running as much as the next dork, but there you have it.

My next adventure will be finding out if it's going to come back.

Sounds about right for almost every injury, which sucks for us runners

True. I guess I just didn't realize how long it would take.

And, of course, it may come back next week.

Running's stupid.