Plantar fasciitis and heel spurs are two common causes of heel pain. Although these two foot conditions are related and often occur simultaneously, they aren’t the same thing and affect different sections of your heel in different ways.
Both heel spurs and plantar fasciitis can cause similar types of heel pain and other accompanying symptoms. They also have closely related triggers, all of which can make it tricky to know which condition you’re dealing with.
Because of this, it’s important to have heel pain examined by a podiatrist such as Matthew Hinderland, DPM, Jordan Cameron, DPM, or Trevor Whiting, DPM. Our team can expertly diagnose and treat heel pain caused by plantar fasciitis and heel spurs to provide effective pain relief and keep the condition from causing further damage.
In this month’s blog, we highlight the difference between plantar fasciitis and heel spurs, how the two are linked, and how we can treat them.
Your plantar fascia is a ligament that lies right underneath the skin on the bottom of your foot. It connects your heel to the front of your foot, supporting your arch and absorbing all the impact from movements like walking, running, and jumping. However, this tissue is highly prone to wear-and-tear, triggering an inflammatory response from your body.
This inflammation leads to plantar fasciitis and all the symptoms that come with it, such as heel pain, stiffness, swelling, and pain in the arch of your foot. Pain from plantar fasciitis is typically worse in the morning, right when you get up, or after sitting for long periods of time.
You’re much more likely to develop plantar fasciitis if you do repetitive high-impact activities, stand on hard surfaces for long periods, or have flat feet or high arches.
A heel spur is a bony projection that develops on the underside of your heel bone. Typically, it takes a long time for the calcium deposits to build up and cause the spur to protrude to where you can feel it.
Heel spurs are a direct result of any ligament or tendon damage in your foot. When your body triggers an inflammatory stress response to the injured tissue, your body adds extra calcium deposits to the area, eventually leading to the heel spur.
Heel spurs don’t often have any symptoms. Usually, the pain associated with a heel spur is actually caused by the tissue inflammation that led to the spur formation. If you develop one that’s severe enough, it may cause intermittent pain at the formation site, and it often mimics plantar fasciitis pain.
Risk factors for heel spur development include having plantar fasciitis, wearing poor-fitting shoes, running on hard surfaces, and walking with an abnormal gait.
Staying off your feet and resting the affected area are often effective solutions for tissue injuries. However, heel pain that comes with plantar fasciitis and heel spurs doesn’t usually respond well to extended rest, and sometimes pain can even spike after these periods of rest.
If you find that your heel pain has persisted for over a month, it’s time to seek treatment with our Foot and Ankle Institute of Colorado team.
Thankfully, pain and inflammation from both plantar fasciitis and heel spurs typically respond very well to conservative treatments that we offer. Surgery is very rarely needed for either condition.
These are some treatments you can do at home, or are available at our practice, that we may recommend as part of your treatment plan:
These treatments can all help reduce inflammation in your heel, allowing for the injured tissue to heal properly.
If you have heel pain that’s not going away, don’t delay in seeking treatment from our team. We can expertly diagnose and treat the heel pain before the inflammation and tissue damage get worse and become more difficult to address.
Schedule an appointment with us by calling our office or by using our online booking feature today.
