Plantar Fasciitis Running Injury
If you’ve ever felt a pain on the bottom of your foot, there’s a good chance that you’ve experienced plantar fasciitis. While there are numerous other foot injuries from running, the primary foot injury that runners experience is plantar fasciitis. The foot has an extra-thick tendon that runs from the heel and splays out to the ball of the foot in a fan shape called the plantar fascia. Just like any tendon, this thick mass of cables can be pulled and strained through the impact of running.
Plantar Fasciitis Causes
The main causes of plantar fasciitis are poor arch support and inflexibility. Unfortunately, people with flat feet (low arches) and those with high arches are predisposed to aggravating the plantar fascia. This is because flat feet tend to have less support and the foot absorbs more impact than necessary. For high arches, it’s a little different; the plantar fascia is already tightened and, unless warmed-up properly, it tends to be strained a lot easier.
Even normal runners can experience plantar fasciitis from time to time. If your shoes aren’t supporting you adequately, then excess force is being applied to the foot and stretching the plantar fascia. Another problem is poor flexibility. One of the biggest causes of plantar fasciitis is a tight calf muscle. Tight calves will pull on the heel of the foot stretching the plantar fascia. This is why plantar fasciitis pain occurs mostly after running or after sleeping; the calf tightens up and exposes the Plantar Fascia.
Plantar Fasciitis Symptoms
Some symptoms of plantar fasciitis include:
- Pain at the heel or just in front of the heel
- Pain at the heel or along the arch when walking after being off your feet for a while (when you first wake up or if you’ve been sitting down). This pain usually goes away after 30-60 seconds of walking
- Pain under your foot when stretching your calf muscles
oftentimes this injury is confused with heel spurs which are actually calcified growths on the heel
Plantar Fasciitis Treatments
So what are the best plantar fasciitis treatments? Most treatments are simple and don’t require any additional equipment. The bad news is that you’ll probably need to lay off running for a bit (or at least scale it down).
While there is some debate whether the plantar fascia has an inflammation response, taking Advil or aspirin can help reduce inflammation and pain. Ice the foot for 10 minutes every half hour to help reduce any inflammation that may or may not be present.
The next thing is to gently stretch the plantar fascia. There are a variety of techniques for stretching the calf: you can hang your heels off of a stair and slowly lower them, you can place your foot against a wall and slowly apply pressure (as demonstrated in the shin splints running injury, or some people swear by calf stretching devices such as the Prostretch Heel Stretch Device
Another simple technique is plantar fasciitis taping. Using special kinesio tape
For more info on plantar fasciitis taping, check out this video:
Advanced Plantar Fasciitis Pain
If you have extraordinarily bad pain when you first wake up in the morning there are Plantar Fasciitis night splints
which will keep your foot positioned so that the fascia is slightly stretched all night long. These are effective at reducing and even eliminating plantar fasciitis pain.
Plantar Fasciitis Prevention
The best way to prevent plantar fasciitis is to have proper support and maintain muscle flexibility. Constantly stretching your calves will keep them loose and prevent them from pulling on the heel which in turn stretches the plantar fascia. Buying the right running shoe will make sure that it provides the proper support in the right areas (which will depend on foot strike position and arch type) distributing the pressure appropriately.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
[...] something serious. If you’re lucky enough to have caught it early, there are a lot of good plantar fasciitis treatment options available. Below are some of the easiest ways to treat plantar fasciitis at [...]