What Are My Treatment Options for Plantar Fasciitis?

Plantar fasciitis is one of the most painful foot conditions. You could experience stabbing pain extending from the heel to the front of your toes, making walking difficult.

The pain from plantar fasciitis can be debilitating, but the good news is there are treatment options available that offer pain relief. According to podiatrists Ryan Golub, DPM, and Zachary Flynn, DPM, AACFAS, from Arizona Foot Health in Phoenix, Arizona, these treatments make plantar fasciitis go away for good.

Treating plantar fasciitis

Plantar fasciitis occurs when the plantar fascia tissue band that runs from your heel to your toes becomes inflamed, overstretched, or irritated. Stretching the plantar fascia helps relieve the pain, so it’s usually at its worst right after you wake up or have been inactive for a long period.

Treatments for plantar fasciitis focus on reducing or fully eliminating the tears or inflammation in your foot while reducing your pain levels. Some treatments can fully repair the plantar fascia.

Different plantar fasciitis treatments

Our podiatrists offer several different nonsurgical treatment options for plantar fasciitis, depending on the severity of your inflammation and pain levels. They include:

Supporting your arch

Ensuring your arches and the rest of your feet are comfortable and supported helps reduce pain while healing your plantar fascia. Our team recommends avoiding walking around barefoot, as well as shoes with no arch support, such as flip-flops.

Our team can also fit you with custom orthotics that offer your plantar fascia maximum support. We can additionally prescribe night splints that gently stretch your plantar fascia while you sleep, making walking less painful first thing in the morning.

Activity modification

As part of supporting your arch, our team might recommend resting your plantar fascia or changing your activities to ones that cause less stress on your plantar fascia. They might recommend avoiding or reducing sports that involve lots of jumping, running, or moving these activities to a shock-absorbing surface.

Taking medication

Some medications help reduce the pain and swelling in your plantar fascia. Our team often recommends you take ibuprofen or other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medication.

Physical therapy

Physical therapy can include different stretches and exercises that carefully stretch and strengthen your plantar fascia. Your physical therapist might also incorporate techniques like massage and ice that reduce inflammation and pain.

Regenerative medicine

While using more conservative treatments, our podiatrists can concurrently heal your plantar fascia with amniotic growth factor injections. This non-surgical treatment involves injecting amniotic fluids into your plantar fascia.

These injections encourage your body to repair the damaged tissues in your plantar fascia and regrow new, healthy ones. This treatment heals your plantar fascia and helps prevent it from reoccurring.

Pulse Wave Therapy

Throughout 4-5 weekly treatments that last only five minutes, the FDA-cleared Pulse Wave Therapy technology heals your plantar fascia using ballistic sound waves. The energy from the sound waves triggers an internal healing process similar to the one that occurs after amniotic growth factor injections.

Finding the best treatment

Our team gives you a personalized treatment routine that most quickly resolves your plantar fasciitis. Often, our team starts you on conservative treatments that give immediate relief while administering treatment that heals your plantar fascia and minimizes the risk of a relapse.

You can quickly heal your plantar fasciitis with the right treatment routine with completely noninvasive relief. Contact our office to get started on pain relief and treatment today.