Plantar Facsiitis Success Stories?...

I had PF twice and even bilaterally for awhile.  It took a fair while to get it under control but I continued to work every day with it. 

I never used electrotherapy or hot or cold on my feet but I would think the US should help to speed your healing.  Hot and cold wraps should be good to relax the muscles I would think.  I also did a lot of self-massage on my plantar surface of my foot - especially deep into the muscle.

Pay attention to what seems to help you and stick with that.  Don't get discouraged, it's a nuisance but you will get better.  Now, I run and workout far more than I ever did before and I have no problems with my feet at all.

I also got some professional deep tissue massages on my feet that seemed to help as well.

Good Luck.

I was down for nearly 3 months last summer.  Mine blew up suddenly on mile 8 of a planned 15 mile run....and I was done.

I rested, wore the boot, stretched....nothing.

I ended up buying some generic orthotics from Walgreens that were marked as a help for PF....and I wore them religiously all day long.  I was never bare footed in my house or anywhere else.  Slowly I started to feel better. After nearly 12 weeks I started running a mile every other day.....with a loooong calf stretching session after each run.  I slooooowly built up from there.

Today is 172 consecutive days of running for me.  I started at a 2 mile minimum and a long run of 3.5.  January I ran 140 miles in 31 days.  This month I ran 140 miles also, but in 28 days....5 mile per day avg. with a couple of long runs of 11 and a few 2 mile runs because I've been sick.

I can't say that it is 100% gone, because I can still feel a twinge some mornings.....but it leaves quickly.  I still wear the orthotics most of the time and still do a 15 minute routine of calf stretcing after each run.  I hav religiously followed a very slow build up......10% increase each month, and I have slowed mypace considerably......most of my outdoors runs are at 9:30 pace, my treadmill runs at 10:30 pace.  I did one 6 mile run at 8:20 pace.

I'm 53........you will heal if you give it time, and you work on stretching your calves.

Good luck!

I don't know if mine is PF (I keep saying it's not) but it's been an annoying problem in my left foot for quite a long time (on and off all last year). It's much better now, and manageable.

I stopped running for awhile, just cycled...then gradually starting running short distances.

I feel that Hoka's have helped me a lot to reduce the heel trauma.

Still have some tightness, and slight soreness, but seems to be going away. I can run 7miles now without it bothering me.

mine just flared up again recently. I had to miss a couple of runs.  so what I have been doing again and should have been doing is stretching the hamstrings and calf muscles. I also have been icing daily and rolling a golf ball across the arch multiple times a day. I've taped up my arch too some but it does seem to be getting better. 

mine usually flares up on longer runs upwards of 100 minutes or so.

Struggled with this as well; I think of it as God's way of telling me to swim more.

Stretches here helped, especially the first two. Haven't tried the tennis ball roll, but thinking about it feels good.

The important things are rest, then come back sloooowly. I glanced at your profile, OP, and you are relatively young. Be patient, as you don't want to screw things up for your 50s and 60s.

I had it in my right foot for about a year.  I took off 12 from running and that didn't help.  What helped that foot was wearing a boot at night.  Now I've had it in my left foot for nearly 2 years, and I have tried everything and just can't get it better.  After getting a cortisone shot in the heel, I ended up with a calcaneal stress fracture and was in a walking boot for 4 weeks and then another 8 weeks of no weight wearing exercise.  Was cleared to start small walks and then jogs and it just came right back.  I've done PT twice have spent enough money on shoes/orthotics to where I could have taken my family to Hawaii.  I've massaged, iced, used heat, foam rolled, rolled on a trigger point ball, stretched.  It gets to the point where I am just going to let it go.  I'm thinking about doing PRP.  My insurance won't pay for it, but 2 people said it helped them.  Oh, and FWIW, whenever I wear heavy stability or motion control shoes, it flares up a lot worse.  Even though I was told I should be in those.  I actually have less pain with my Newton Momentums.  So go figure.  I guess I'm not really a success story, but it's nice to see that there are some successes out there.

jami

I had a bad bout in 2003, brought on by a hilly race I was seriously undertrained for.  I couldn't even walk on the foot for a week or 2 without limping, and because I was in small town in Central America at the time, my options for treatment were limited.  I couldn't even search the internet for advice!

I didn't run a step for 2-3 months, and when I started back, I started back extremely conservatively.  At night I would tape my foot in a dorsiflexed position (trying to recreate the sock I'd seen in running magazines).  I wore shoes all the time.  All standard practice (except maybe the not running at all), but mine never came back, knock on wood.  Good luck.

I had it pretty bad one year in my left foot.  I did not buy all these fancy heat/cold wraps...did not pay any money for massage stuff specifically for it...I will give away my secret...

I bought a can of peas, stuck them in the feezer.  Each night as I would sit in my recliner drinking a beer and watching TV before bed I would have the frozen can of peas on the floor under my left foot.  I would put pressure on it and roll it back and forth while I watched TV.  Never slowed my training, would just take a couple IB Proufen before my long runs.  Within a couple weeks of doing that every night for at least an hour it was gone.

You ask why canned peas..unlike ice packs and wraps, frozen vegtables thaw from the inside out, plus it is in a nice rolled shape and they are not pressurized when sealed and will not explode when frozen..

I still have the same can for the last few years sitting in my freezer, it works great for neck pain and lower back pain from a hard training session, the shape is perfect to sit under your back/neck on the floor and you can just relax and watch a few shows while the cold does its magic...

I've had PF since August last season.  I've significantly scaled back my running.  Took a couple months off entirely.  While doing that I went to Physical Therapy and tried almost everything else to relieve it.  Hot/Cold, massage, lacrosse ball, stretching, foam rolling, mobility exercises, strausberg sock, etc. etc......

After my time off I started running again sparesly.  I spent some time pool running and then progressed to hill workouts.  Hills really seemed to help rebuild fitness by running at a slow pace and lower impact but still difficult.  I ran hard in the pool too.  Then worked on my run form moving toward higher cadence and shorter stride.   

Earlier this week my coach sent me a Training Peaks notification that my running thresholds have increased!!!   I was shocked because of the lack of running, and the 30 min TT that was the breakthrough workout was the longest distance I'd run since August 2012!!  But the hard work in the pool and hills paid off.

I'm not 100% now.  I still have tighteness and some slight pain.  But I have it under control now.  I continue the lacrosse ball rolling, foam rolling and mobility and hot/cold wraps.  It's now tolerable to wake up in the morning after a tough run!

Stretches and "sleeping" in a Strassburg sock.

I had PF oh geez, probably about 12 years ago I guess. It hit hard and I was down for 9 months with no running. I would get it cleared up in one foot then it hit the other foot. It finally went away after several things - cortisone shot, pres. orthotics, moved away from the structured motion control shoe I had been running in, changed the shoes I had been wearing to work.

Don't give up hope, keep looking for an answer. I know people have mixed feelings about the shot. I was at my wits end and that is what the doc recommended at the time and I would have tried anything at that point. It hurt just to walk around, forget about running. I was teaching preschool all day back then. I could not take another gym time trying to teach the kids to gallop, skip, and jump with my foot hurting so bad all day long.

Once it went away it has never come back for me so there is hope! No more problems with PF for all of these years.

Best wishes!

Just giving my two cents about the custom orthotics - In my case they really did help me get relief from the PF. They were not THE solution because I did still have some issues after I had the orthotics, but they did help. 

That said, I was then convinced the orthotics were the answer for my feet and wore them in all shoes at all times. I woke up and put on shoes. I then spent many years with other foot problems including frequently rolling my ankles. My personal feeling, and this is only my opinion, is that the orthotics raised my foot up enough out of my shoe so that my already loose and overly flexible ankles lost all stability. My feet no longer had any feel for the ground underneath me.

Over the course of the last year and half I have stopped wearing any orthotics and moved to a neutral, low drop shoe. I have not rolled an ankle since wearing these shoes. Crazy, because if I would go into any running store they take one look at my low arches and over pronation and put me in a stability or motion control shoe in a heart beat.

I agree with this totally!  Orthotics was an essential part of my rehab.  I still where them day to day and running.  However, I do think that once you get the problem solved it would be better to address the problems roots and move toward minimalistic footwear.  I think it has to be done carefully, but if it's done right you can continue strengthening the weakness that caused the problem in the first place.

Wow! Thanks for all of the information, guys...Just knowing that so many people have dealt with this makes me feel a little less disabled.

I have started rolling with a frozen water bottle nightly and I think I'm going to start doing it more often. I've also been prescribed Nuproxen and that does seem to make the pain go away. (although, "pain" is of little concern...I want to be able to enjoy our perfect weather running trails and races without causing further damage) I'm trying my hardest to avoid injections...Not only because the though of a needle going into my foot makes me nauseous, but my doctor himself said that it could lead to other tendon damage and he only likes to do it as a last resort. I think the biggest thing for me is going to be not training...I've recently re-aggravated a back injury so even swimming and biking has been out of the question for about a week. As you can all imagine, I'm going a little crazy...

As always, thank you for the advice...

I had success with Superfeet orthotics. I wore them in all my shoes and wore Birchenstocks at home. That correct most of my problem.

But I had slight chronic pain for a long time until I started massaging daily with one of those hard nubby rubber balls. It almost worked like a miracle.