If you’ve got a case of plantar fasciitis (PF), then you probably want to know how to relieve it as soon as possible.

Here’s a quick and dirty list for all the things that have helped me personally recover, plus two treatment methods I investigated and avoided, and one that by all accounts seems to help.

• Get a real diagnosis from a podiatrist, instead of guessing what is wrong with your heel. 
• REST! Especially at the beginning, seriously get off your feet as much as humanly possible. 
• Find out what kind of shoes might work best with your specific condition and anatomy with a shoe consultation at a good sports injury store.
• Get the right shoes. For a whole lot of us with PF, those are athletic shoes.
• Get some decent arch support in your shoes with over the counter inserts or custom orthotics.
• Start a regular routine of stretching your calf muscles, Achilles tendon and plantar fascia.
• Consider getting a night splint to prevent re-injuring your plantar fascia. (I have not done this but from research, this appears to help quite a lot of people.)
• Research whether you need surgery or cortisone shots. You very well may not – I haven’t, at least so far.
• Explore herbal treatments if you are so inclined. I get great help from arnica montana cream.
• Ice your foot in the acute phases.
• Listen to your body, both during any acute phases and as you heal.

To get more detail on all of these methods, check out the Heel Pain Treatment page >>

I have read that it will take at least as long to heal from plantar fasciitis as the amount of time you have had it before starting treatment. Clearly, this is in no way a scientifically viable theory, but it is a useful way to begin to think about the problem. 

Basically, the earlier you begin treatments the shorter your recovery time is likely to be. This really can’t help most of us with painful heels, who are little too far down this road already, but it can help us to spread the word among our friends and family about awareness of the symptoms of plantar fasciitis.

For the majority of us, recovery is going to be a long term process. No one with a badly sore heel wants to hear this but it is clear that it usually takes months or years to heal from plantar fasciitis.

I don’t know why this is and will explore it more in future posts — maybe because we have to use our feet so that it is hard to truly rest them, maybe because we tend to push too hard as soon as we feel a bit better, or maybe because there is a conflict of interest between wanting to be generally healthy physically and needing to rest your foot.

It is common for the pain to lessen in a few weeks, with treatment, but in my experience, it was only the acute pain that toned down after those first weeks of complete rest, multiple daily icing and stretching, ibuprofen, arch supports, etc. I have been treating my plantar fasciitis, earnestly, since June 2012, for about five months now, and things are much better than they were. I can hike a couple of hours now, and I am back to walking 30 minutes or so from work each day on hard city streets (with great shoes), but I am not “healed.” I can feel it improving very slowly, but I have the feeling this will take a year or more to really resolve, which is quite common. Unfortunately, some people keep the problem chronically, for years on end. I hope to avoid that, and to help you avoid that!

Action Item

• Start treatments as soon as you can.
• Be as patient as you possibly can. For the great majority of us, this is going to take a while.

Icing plantar fasciitis is a cheap and easy treatment for the inflammation in your plantar fascia ligament. My podiatrist recommended this and I don’t think I’ve ever read a plantar fasciitis treatment plan that did not include it. I found that it helped a lot at the beginning, when my pain and swelling were more constant and acute. But I’m also using it as a sort of maintenance tool, as my foot begins to feel better and I use it more. So on days I walk the 40 minutes home from work, I ice it when I get home, and when I hiked a few miles recently, I iced it right away when I got home.

Icing Methods

When using any of the methods below, you want to avoid the risk of frostbite. So don’t let the ice come in direct contact with your skin with the methods used below, and don’t apply the ice for longer than 15 or 20 minutes at a time. Basically, ice as soon as possible after exercise or standing for longer periods, or anything that is hard on your feet.

Ice pack

Personally, I prefer using an ice pack for icing. As soon as my heel pain got really bad and I realized I had plantar fasciitis, I started icing my foot at least a couple of times a day. I’m not a fan of being cold, but this helped so much with the pain and swelling that it actually felt good to do it. I freeze one of those reusable ice packs — mine is called Tech Pack, but you could use any ice pack.  The Tech Pack has a thin paper cover, but to avoid over-cooling, I still cover it in a thin hand towel, or wear a sock,  and rest my feet on it for 20 minutes. (In the photo we didn’t cover it, to show the ice pack better.) You can ice while you’re doing something else so it doesn’t feel burdensome. I usually ice my feet while on the computer. By the way, I ice both feet even though I seem to have the problem in my left foot, as a preventative measure.

Bag of frozen peas

Some people like to use a bag of frozen peas as an ice pack, and I tried this, but preferred my ice pack in the end, only because the ice pack has developed a general shape that sort of fits my foot at this point.  Do what you like!

Frozen water bottle

One popular method is to roll your foot on a plastic water bottle full of frozen water, which gives you a double treatment of massage and icing. This sounds like such a great idea, but honestly this never worked for me. First of all, the bottle wouldn’t stay round when I froze water inside it, so it didn’t really “roll.” Also, I didn’t like any of the massage methods besides using my hand on my feet at the beginning, when they really hurt. It just hurt too much to roll anything on it. Now, when it doesn’t hurt much or at all on most days, I still don’t like the feeling of rolling a tennis ball or frozen bottle along my foot. But you should give this a try if you are inclined as a lot of people really like it and find it useful.

Action Items

• When your plantar fascia is inflamed and painful, apply ice to the bottom of your feet for 15-20 minute periods, with an ice pack, bag of frozen peas or frozen water bottle. (Don’t put the ice directly on your skin.)
• Continue to ice your foot until your plantar fasciitis resolves, anytime that you might overuse your plantar fascia ligament, when exercising or standing for longer periods.