Causes and Treatments for Plantar Fasciitis Symptoms

Plantar fasciitis symptoms are most commonly felt first thing in the morning, or when taking the first step after a period of inactivity. If you get severe heel pain when you first get out of bed, or aching cramping underneath the arches of your foot, then you may well have this condition, which is one of the commonest causes of foot pain amongst adults.

Plantar fasciitis commonly occurs if people have incorrect foot motion, typically over-pronation, which is when the foot rolls inwards during motion. This causes over stretching of the long ligament which runs underneath the foot (plantar fascia), eventually damaging it. Another major cause of plantar fasciitis is overly tight calf muscles, because this also causes excessive stress on the plantar fascia, this tine indirectly through the connection via the heel bone.

Over time these stresses damage the plantar fascia, causing minute tears within it. Rather than healing, the damage is generally aggravated if people run or otherwise exercise a lot and if they wear ill fitting and poorly supportive shoes for long periods. In addition, people who are carrying more than a few extra pounds, and women who have had children, are also highly susceptible to this very painful foot problem.

And plantar fasciitis also gets worse as part of the normal aging process of the foot, as the ligaments become less supple and resilient.

Treatment for plantar fasciitis is not quick or easy. As soon as the ligament is torn or painful, it will take anything from a couple of months to a lifetime to fully cure the afflicted foot, depending on whether you continue to injure it. The best treatments are multi-pronged and long term. In fact the actual treatment depends on a consideration of the patient's medical history, activity level, precise symptoms and extent of pain.

The initial phase of plantar fasciitis treatment, when the inflammation of the fascia is causing significant pain, involves resting the foot as much as possible, icing it, padding it with orthotics to relieve the pressure as much as possible, taking analgesics to manage the pain and using night splints to allow the fascia to heal in an elongated state. Many people also advocate doing gentle fascia stretching exercises and directly massaging the ligament during the initial recovery stage but this really does depend on how badly damaged your fascia is and how much pain you are in.

Do not start exercises to increase the flexibility of the calf muscle, the hamstrings and the Achilles tendon until the plantar fascia is no longer inflamed and the pain has subsided. Although calf stretching exercises are some of the best to treat plantar fasciitis, they can be quite aggressive and can actually damage the tendon even more if attempted too soon. And no-one want that!