Heal Your Heel Pain

Just an update to yesterday’s post: I ran and finished the Twin Cities Marathon 10-miler today. My feet held out and no heel pain occurred. Yes! This was my 5th TC 10-miler, but my first after wrestling with and beating a bad case of plantar fasciitis.

Just a couple of years ago I limped and winced with the condition, and thought I might never run a city block again. Since then, I’ve run maybe 10 or 11 races, and have had no recurrence of the heel agony. So, if you currently suffer from plantar fasciitis, know that there’s hope! I’ve never had any surgery, shots, or ultrasound therapy of any kind. Just a regular routine of conservative, active recovery activities and a readjustment from the abuse I used to subject my feet to. I detail them in my book Injury Afoot, and I’ll be discussing them here. If I can do it, so can you!

Pat Hafner_TC 10-miler #5

Well, I guess tomorrow morning is when the rubber meets the road, or in this case, the running shoe meets the road. Sunday, Oct. 5, at 7:13 AM Central Time, the Twin Cities Marathon starting gun sounds. (Yes, 7:13…not 7:15 or 7:30…the marathon organizers run a pretty tight ship!) Several thousand runners will stride through the picturesque and chilly Minneapolis/St. Paul streets, enjoying the fall colors & the camaraderie, and trying to not collapse in a heap. A few of us more gravity-challenged folks are opting for the less grueling, more realistic 10-mile run. This will be my 5th TC 10-miler, but my first after recovering from the plantar fasciitis ordeal. So I guess we’ll see if the strategies I’ve listed in the book Injury Afoot – which this blog is based on – stand the 10-mile test. (Actually I know they do…I just ran 6-9 miles several times in recent weeks, but proving it on the course of a nationally-recognized race makes it more official.)

A few things I’ll be sure to include in my pre-race prep for foot protection:

Gently stretched Achilles tendons, calf muscles, and hamstrings. Same thing for the lower back. I have good, sturdy inserts in the shoes already to support my arch. And I’ll make sure to warm up thoroughly, with plenty of slow, gentle walking, then working up to faster walking, then to a slow jog. All just precautions. I currently have no heel pain at all, but I never want a recurrence.

Anyway, wish me well. For me 10 miles is a long way!

To all you fitness enthusiasts and avid exercisers who acquired plantar fasciitis: I feel your pain. Or at least I used to.

What a maddening condition it is…the very activities which bolster your health, tone your muscles, and burn calories are often those that contribute to the arrival of plantar fasciitis. Running, hiking, walking, maybe even yardwork or other projects. And to a greater extent, working a job on your feet all day. Sound familiar? Grrr. What a deal. Proof that fairness often does not prevail.

But reality is what it is. The best first step is to decide you can and will overcome it. Don’t do anything rash, as in things involving scalpels and injections. I’ll continue to post ideas and exercises to guide plantar fasciitis sufferers through the ordeal. You’re almost certain to find a combination of actions therein that works for you and your particular injury level. Once you’ve talked to as many folks as I have when researching material for the book Injury Afoot: 30 Things You Can Do to Relieve Heel Pain and Speed Healing of Plantar Fasciitis, you realize a couple of things: almost everyone you speak with knows someone who’s acquired it, or has had it themselves. And, fortunately, a great many of those victims eventually beat it…for them it’s now just a bad (very bad) memory.

So active, productive, wholesome people are often the ones who fall under the spell of plantar fasciitis. It’s the sad truth. But those same people often overcome it and get back to an active lifestyle. Be one of them.

So plantar fasciitis snuck into your life, all of a sudden. It sunk in its talons, and yanked you off your feet as you writhed in a fit of pain. And it’s not yet ready to release you from its grasp.  And the funny thing is (if it can ever be called funny), the plantar fasciitis condition came out of the blue. It struck out of nowhere!

Or so it seems. The truth is, plantar fasciitis is a condition that results from cumulative stress. As in, years of accumulating damage in some cases. When it rears its ugly head, it rears it big time, no question. But it had been creeping up for quite a while, if your situation is like most.

Here are some possible examples:

Years of … working on your feet, with little reprieve; wearing bad (but maybe cool-looking!) shoes; never, ever stretching; bearing a little too much weight on your frame; exercising too little, resulting in weakened supporting muscles; exercising too much, and not allowing your body to recuperate. The list goes on, but you get the picture. These factors and others will be covered more in-depth in future posts, but for now realize that this situation is not like a broken arm or a sprained ankle. It’s not from one sudden action that wrenched your feet into an injured state. In most cases, the injury built up over a long time.

What does this mean? Well, it may mean that it will take a while to undo it. You will need to nurture your injured feet; you will need to take action and create conditions that put your body in the best possible state to heal. And you’ll need to practice patience accordingly. That’s what I’ll help you with in these pages, and what I cover in greater detail in the book Injury Afoot: 30 Things You Can Do To Relieve Heel Pain And Speed Healing of Plantar Fasciitis.

But take heart. Most of a plantar fasciitis recovery journey involves establishing a healthy routine which involves some easy stretching and strengthening motions, wearing ideal footwear, and avoiding the actions that hurt you in the first place. It may take a few weeks or a few months…or not. Your recovery may be almost instantaneous, nobody knows. And you won’t know until you embrace a sensible recovery routine. So have confidence,  believe in your body’s power to heal, and start your comeback today.

Your foot’s plantar fascia, the dense, durable band of connective tissue which runs from your heel to the base of your toes, has maintained its integrity for years and years of your lifetime. The average person takes 5,000 to 12,000 steps daily. Many of these steps are on hard, unforgiving surfaces, and each step puts a force on the feet that is about one and a half times that person’s body weight. When running, your feet withstand more than three times this force. From childhood to adulthood, the plantar fascia has endured all this, held its own, and helped you stand, walk, and run.

Yet despite its rugged nature, the plantar fascia has a marked weakness. It lacks flexibility. The plantar fascia is made of collagen, and collagen is not very elastic. So even though the plantar fascia is pretty tough, when it is subjected to impact, stresses, and strains, it does not stretch to any great extent and then bounce back. Instead, the force it weathers from this repetitive trauma causes tiny tears to form along its surface. These micro-tears will eventually heal, if allowed to do so. But if the abuse continues without rest or remedy, your feet have no chance to recover from the existing tears. With unrelenting trauma, bad things can happen. The micro-tears can increase. The collagen of which the plantar fascia is composed degenerates. Inflammation of the plantar fascia follows and remains. The inflammation then causes soreness, and in some cases debilitating pain.

You have plantar fasciitis. So what did you do that was so wrong, that thrust such “abuse” on your feet? Did you force your feet to endure torture beyond anything they were designed to withstand? Possibly. But perhaps your actions were constructive; you became dedicated and got serious about exercise. There’s a chance you maintained a positive, healthy workout regimen, where you got your heart rate up, worked your muscles, and burned calories. Maybe you were exercising to lose weight. Or, you may have simply performed your job, one which requires you to be on your feet for long periods of time. In short, plantar fasciitis affects very active people and completely sedentary people, and those with activity levels anywhere in between. Its victims come in all shapes and sizes, and in just about any age range. However, the following factors increase your risk of experiencing plantar fasciitis:

• Extensive use of the feet. This includes just about every activity you do on your feet, if done for very long periods of time or with great intensity. Working all day on your feet and running are common causes.
• Excess weight. Carrying just 15 or 20 pounds of extra weight greatly increases the odds of plantar fasciitis occurring.
• A heavy body. Unfortunately, the effects of impact and stress on the feet are still amplified by a fit but larger body. Muscle and bone do count; the laws of physics ensure that your feet can’t tell the difference.
• Hazardous shoes. In other words, the choice of footwear usually based on fashion instead of comfort. Shoes with high heels, an extremely tight fit, a loose and floppy fit, very little cushioning, and those which don’t support the foot’s arch belong in this category.
• Age. A 20-year-old can acquire a case of plantar fasciitis, but a person’s risk becomes greater after age 30 and especially once he or she reaches middle age.
• Doing too much too soon when embarking on an exercise routine.
• Doing too much total exercise without adequate rest. In other words, overtraining.
• Flat feet.
• Highly-arched feet.
• Inflexible calf muscles and Achilles tendons. Tightness in these areas is a huge contributor to plantar fasciitis, as it places extra strain on the plantar fascia.

Any of these factors sound familiar? If any describe you, your activities, or your footwear, rest assured you are amongst many. Common characteristics and behaviors can cause the condition to rear its ugly head, so you may not have done anything that horrendous or atypical to acquire plantar fasciitis.

In the throes of plantar fasciitis pain? You’re far from alone. The medical industry generally agrees: an incredible 10% of the world’s population will experience the condition during their lifetime. And with an increase in obesity and an aging population (two of the primary risk factors for plantar fasciitis) throughout much of the world, that percentage could actually inch up.

What makes these numbers even worse is the duration of plantar fasciitis misery. Victims tend to languish in pain from anywhere between a month to several years, and some retain it forever. The folks who heal quickly are those who take action. The ones who commit to helping themselves heal. Conversely, those people who continue to suffer from it tend to ignore it and just wait for the condition to go away on its own.

Choose to not ignore plantar fasciitis; resist letting the malady make you a hobbled victim. You can turn this thing around. But to do that, you need to make a commitment and take action. I don’t believe in magical remedies and miracle cures – although I do know beating plantar fasciitis can feel miraculous! (See the “About” section in the sidebar for more of that. :”) It takes most people years to develop plantar fasciitis; thus, it takes some time to undo it. There is no 10-minute cure for plantar fasciitis, regardless of what some advertisers would like you to believe. You want to not only alleviate the pain and recuperate from the acute injury phase…you want to prevent plantar fasciitis from recurring. And that takes a full-spectrum approach to healing. Strengthening, stretching, caution, enthusiasm, info on new findings, encouragement, advice, etc.

That’s the perspective of this site, and that’s what I’ll help pass along to you.