Dry Needling for Plantar Fasciitis

Getting rid of plantar fasciitis is rarely easy. Most treatments involve rest, lots of calf stretching, and calf raises. This does work for some but not everyone. For stubborn and chronic cases of plantar fasciitis these exercises don’t seem to do the trick and can even make it more painful. Adding dry needling to the treatment program works wonders for pain relief and getting muscles to loosen and relax. If you want to know more about how dry needling works, check out this blog post.

When to Use Dry Needling for Plantar Fasciitis

Dry needling is something that we use daily in our Lake Country clinic for a variety of injuries. It is quite effective for treating plantar fasciitis. We use dry needling to help take tension off the heel, decrease pain, and promote more blood flow for healing. Getting the healing process going is often hard with plantar fasciitis due to the fact that every time you stand and walk you end up irritating it a bit. Just like picking a scab and it never fully heals.

When treating plantar fasciitis we often needle the calf muscles, foot muscles, and the plantar fascia itself. All of these muscles attach near the heel and contribute to increased tension on the plantar fascia. Needling the foot is not usually the first option because it can be quite uncomfortable. Often, just treating the calf muscles with dry needling does the trick.

In the cases where treating the calf isn’t quite enough, then performing dry needling to the foot muscles and plantar fascia is very effective and worth the discomfort.

Combining Dry Needling With a Rehab Program

Dry needling by itself won’t solve your plantar fasciitis. It will help get the symptoms under control and allow the exercises to be more effective. Finding a good starting point where we are making progress but not doing too much to irritate the plantar fasciitis is very important. It can be easy to do too little or too much and progress ends up stalling. Having a long term plan in place with a step by step process to get to the end is also important so that you are prepared to handle the demands of your sport.

Resolve Your Plantar Fasciitis

If you are in Lake Country and plantar fasciitis is keeping you from doing what you enjoy, reach out to us! We see this frequently at our clinic and get great results with helping people get back to their active lifestyle.