I had chronic plantar fasciitis for six years, and all people suggest is “keep seeing a doctor”. How many times am I supposed to see a doctor? I been through so many specialists and physical therapists, and no one can fix me. Doctors just rush me in and out in under two minutes. It frustrates me that people on Reddit say things like “not everyone is meant to run”, and yet they don’t say how you are supposed to know if you are meant for running or not. I literally did see a doctor before I started running, and they never said there was anything wrong with my body that would prevent me from running. It’s ridiculous I am paying hundreds of dollars to someone who has years of medical training when all they can say is “stop running”. People defend the high salaries of doctors because it’s hard to become a doctor, yet doctors apparently have the critical thinking skills of an 8 year old during actual appointments.
Have you seen a sports specialist? Have you seen a physio who deals with athletes? The big red flag I see is that you say they rush you through. That is never a good thing.
I’d never go see a GP for sports related issues unless he/she was also an athlete. My two knee surgeries were performed by Ortho’s who worked with elite sports people. Huge success with both and the physiotherapy afterwards.
I hate to say it but Instagram can often be better than doctors for most sports injuries.
Even the sports physiotherapist you visit might not be that great. Do a search on Instagram for plantar fascitis exercises. And you’ll pull up an infinite number of closeup video and how to exercises.
Sometimes it’s junk. Sometimes it doesn’t actually relate to your specific case. You still need to do some work. But very often the people making this stuff has suffered or are an expert at exactly your mechanical injury. And it’s pretty quick content you can scroll through and see immediately and often try some aspect of right away.
I certainly wouldn’t go all in something that looks crazy. And the advice in some cases might not be perfect. But often it’s an exercise that’s worth a shot if the injury is just something that doctors will often say, “rest, ice, stretch” and you feel nothing is working.
Just because you’ve seen crappy doctors doesn’t mean doctors suck. I’ve never had a doctor rush me through in a couple mins. You’re not forced to see a specific person to find someone else.
My ortho spends 15+ mins with me even for follow ups. Normally he doesn’t leave until we get way too sidetracked and start talking about sports and apparently needs to see other patients.
Where do you find those types of doctors? I never found one in my whole life
This is true as far as it goes–competent and sports-literate medical professionals do exist, yes–but unless you have infinite time and money it can be challenging to find one from scratch, particularly on an injury-relevant timescale. I suppose the real solution is to live in Boulder or somewhere like that and know a bunch of doctors/PTs/etc through masters swim, group rides, etc., which probably works very well but presents certain challenges itself.
Re: OP, yes, I have also found this pretty frustrating. At a slight tangent, I suspect you see variations on “go to a doctor for plantar fasciitis symptoms” on Reddit so often because it’s a sort of applause light/reliably gets third-party upvotes, not because it’s actually good advice.
only take advice from reddit if you want to be slow and BOP forever. find a PT not a doctor
Had a short bout of it in the Army.
Our unit therapist had me freeze a bottle and roll the foot. Use a golf ball at heel and a lacrosse ball to roll out my calf. As much pressure as you can take and then little more.
No walking around in flip flops/thongs/slides, just barefoot when feasible.
No running, jumping marching as the profile would have read until the pain was gone plus 5 days. Stretch the arches the best you can with big toe flex.
Some Docs do want you to give up all activity as the fix to an injury/problem area. Make sure you just pound it into them you’re and active person and want to maintain an active lifestyle. Sometimes there are more aggressive methods that might sideline you short term that fix the issue long term.
I had a two year bout of it many years ago. I saw my regular doctor, a podiatrist, a PT guy, and a chiropractor over the two years. Spent a fair amount of money on co-pays. I also rolled the foot with a frozen water bottle while sitting at my desk at work and used the golf ball. Also did plenty of stretches. But, I never went barefoot. Always had (and still do) a pair of sandals to wear as soon as I get out of bed and around the house. I was told by all the “professionals” that I could keep running and I did. Funny thing, it didn’t clear up until I was forced to stop running due to cancer surgery. Had to take about 3 months off and then started back pain free and used the BarryP plan to get back to mileage.
There was a podiatrist that used to post here (rruff?) and I believe he said that the cure to plantar fasciitis is the last thing you did before it healed. IMO - that means it will get better when it’s ready to get better no matter how you treat it.
I bet you didn’t see a sport doctor specialist, someone who sees a lot of running injuries.
But to be fair, even those that DO specialize in running injuries and are legitimately expert in them, won’t have a lot to offer for long-term running injuries - there’s almost no magic bullet other than rest, recovery, and a SLOW return. There’s no shortcut drug, and most surgeries don’t even work well for chronic running injuries. That’s why when you Google-Chat-GPT-Gemini research these things, it seems they tell you as much as the doctor does. There’s actually not much they can do for these things.
In fact, if you DO find some medical specialist (probably wont’ be a real MD) who does have some magic cure for these things, they’re almost certainly overselling-overhyping it and hoping you get a lucky placebo effect and start swearing by their treatment. There are sooooo many chiropractors that do this - they get lucky in that a lot of these running injuries self-resolve with decreased activity, but they’ll be happy to charge you for repeat visits for ‘hydrotherapy’ or some other thing that has nearly zero actual medical research/science behind it.
When I was seeing a physiotherapist for an injury, I knew I found the right one when he said “if you want to get better, my advice is to stop running, but I know you’re not going to do that, so let’s work with what we’ve got”
If you are referring to a PCP/GP, then I guess yes because they aren’t really well trained in sport injuries.
I have a lot of hospitalist friends (intern medicine doctors for the hospital). they all know that I’m a runner/triathlete and they ask me (infectious disease) all the time about running injuries. I learned on my own and also from one of my best friends who’s a PT and I was his guinea pig when he was learning gait analysis, still in its relative infancy.
Really what you need to find is a specialist who specializes in your sport. Sports medicine is so different. Most PCP/GP don’t understand what athletes do. I’ll also add that PTs make a big difference too. I have a couple PT friends who only work in the hospital and mostly treat elderly patients with some debilitation from their illness. They have very limited knowledge on sports related injuries. A couple of them are runners and it’s a bit ironic that some of them are poor runners with recurrent injuries.
The first part of that would have made me never come back. I want a true believer!
I saw a shot of someone wearing this shirt in a post regrading the NYC One Dollar Ultra
I think it says all your doctor needs to know
I’m fortunate that my Primary is also a Runner, and a couple of staff at the practice, as well
It was more an admission that he knew the type of person with whom he was working with than anything else.
Where do you live? Medical care differs wildly depending on location.
I haven’t ran in a year, and it hasn’t healed
I did see a podiatrist who specialized in sports medicine. They didn’t help
I am in the Phoenix area
What are you wearing on your feet and how often do you go barefoot (even around the house)? IME you need to be wearing really supportive shoes/sandals ALL the time until it heals.