Everyone has their favourite treatment for plantar fasciitis and each technique has its champions claiming that it is the best. How can they all be right?
At the end of the day, true plantar fasciitis is due to excessive load in the plantar fascia, so the only way to treat plantar fasciitis successfully in the long term is to reduce that load. I can think of only 2 (maybe 3) ways in which the load can be reduced in the plantar fascia. One is low dye strapping and the other is with certain foot orthotic design parameters. The potential third way is calf muscle stretching as there are some fibres from the Achilles tendon that pass through to the plantar fascia.
All the other modalities such as cortisone injections, shockwave therapy, cryosurgery, active release techniques, magic wands, crystals, deep tissue therapy, TOPAZ, trigger point therapy, nerve blocks etc , etc only help with the healing of the damaged tissue. Not of these can actually lower the load in the damaged tissue.
The long term management of plantar fasciitis is dependent on the load in the tissue being reduced, not depending on some pivotal magical cure that does not reduce the load.
See these for the latest on plantar fasciitis and low dye strapping, as well as this approach.
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