Heel Spur Treatment

Something I do to relieve my heel pain is heel spur exercises, which only takes about ten minutes each morning (maybe more, and only after I’ve walked around barefoot for a little while). Regularly stretching the muscles in your leg is a good idea, even if you do not have heel pain. It improves stability and balance, and they are a really great heel spur treatment you can use without forking out any money.

I’ve been stretching every morning for more years than I care to remember (I’m a regular at the fitness gym!). But since I’ve been suffering with heel spurs, I have concentrated on relieving my heel and foot pain caused by plantar facsiitis.

There a number of exercises which you can safely do at home, with the aid of a towel, a small step (maybe the bottom step of your staircase) and a frozen bottle of water!

Towel Pulling

With a long towel, hold the ends and loop the middle over your foot. Keeping your toes pointed upwards and your knees straight, pull the towel towards your body. Release the tension on the towel and repeat several times.

Toe Stretch Using Staircase

On the bottom step of your stairs (or other flat step or heavy box), stand with your heels (do both feet for balance) hanging off. Lower yourself, stretching your heel downwards until you feel a tightening in your calf muscles.

Hold this bottom position for around thirty to forty-five seconds, then relax and raise your heel back to its normal position. Do five or six of these ‘repetitions’, repeating the exercise twice per day.

Calf Stretch Against a Wall

This exercise is a really simple one you can do just by placing your feet apart, one behind the other and just lean your hands against the wall. Stand with the painful foot closer to the wall. You will find what distance away from the wall works best for you with practice, but start with your foot about twelve inches back.

Keeping your back leg straight, bend the front knee (with the painful heel) until you feel the bottom of your calf muscle stretching. DO NOT OVER STRETCH, stop before it gets painful to bend it any more. Hold this stretch for the count of ten, then relax. Switch legs, repeating the whole process (for both feet) about five times in one go. Do this twice or three times per day to get the most benefit.

Calf Raise Using a Chair

This is a great exercise, which is easy to do while you sit a desk in work or if your armchair is suitable, you can do them while watching TV.

Sit in a seated position, feet flat on the ground. For the foot which is giving you pain, raise your toes and foot upwards until they can’t go any further, really trying to point your toes up. You will feel a slight pulling on your Achilles tendon and calf muscle. Hold for up to five seconds, then release back to normal. Do about ten ‘repetitions’, repeating five times throughout the day.

By now you should be getting a picture in your mind that stretching is a really great idea for your pain and overall leg and foot conditioning. Can you see why doing stretching is important to our bodies?

One last thing I want to share with you is rolling a frozen bottle of water under your painful foot. You can do this with just a solid rolled object, but with the ice you get the benefit of reducing the inflammation as well.

So just roll the arch of your foot over the frozen bottle in as many directions as you can, exercising the arch and heel of your foot.

These exercises are a great home heel spur treatment, but are normally used to treat plantar fasciitis. Let me know how you get on by leaving me a comment below.

Heel spurs and the plantar fasciitis condition are related, in that many people who start off suffering with plantar fasciitis often end up getting a heel spur. And in a ‘nutshell’, heel spur treatment is the same as treatment for an inflamed plantar fascia.

As described in my last article, the plantar fascia (see picture below) is a thick tendon or ligament (fibrous) like band of connective tissue, which starts at your toes, goes along the sole of your foot and connects with the underside of your heel bone.

In the USA the amount of people who suffer each year with plantar facsiitis is staggering two million. This orthopedic condition is often more associated with people who are overweight, and unfit and who stand for long periods of time. This was true for the start of my own heel pain. I was overweight and was stood (in hard, flat shoes which I do not normally wear) for around seven hours at a family social gathering.

A couple of mornings later, when I first got out of bed I put my foot down and felt a shooting pain across the sole of my foot, but mainly in the heel area. I made numerous appointments with my doctor, who would only prescribe anti-inflammatories and pain killers. These only offered mild relief for my pain, not a cure.

But what did work for me was stretching each part of my calf muscles for about five minutes each morning when I arose. Along with ice therapy, resting it and keeping it elevated. I could not find any medical evidence to support this part of the treatment, but it worked for me and now I am pain free. To find more information on an effective heel spur treatment, please refer to the article at the top of this page.

Hi my name is Peter, and thanks for visiting my blog about finding the best heel spur treatment. You’ve arrived here and I congratulate you for searching ‘what is a heel spur’, because I wish I had done it a lot sooner than I actually did. Because my lack of speed in finding a cure, for what started out as intermittent pain – ended up being permanent chronic heel pain.

So I really hope that you find this information useful, and that you can use it to treat your own heel spurs and plantar fasciitis. Once I had found this information and put it into practice, my heel pain is now a distant memory.

A heel spur is calcified piece of bone at the back of the heel (medical name for the bone is the calcaneus), in the shape of a hook. Heel spur symptoms are very closely related to plantar fasciitis disease, but are not the same. However, these two common orthopedic problems are often confused as being the same. Plantar fasciitis is the condition which affects the plantar fascia. This is the wide band of tissue, similar to your tendons, that runs from the sole of the foot to the ball of the foot.

I have suffered with plantar fasciitis for about a year, and this led me to starting this blog. I had no idea that the bone structure of the back of the foot, called the tarsus, was so complex. People who suffer with plantar fasciitis, often end up with a heel bone spur.

I think I was lucky to have this problem diagnosed by my doctor before a heel spur developed. Waking up first thing in the morning, caused me the most pain. Or if I woke up in the middle of the night and put my foot down without thinking that it was going to hurt, was also problematic. If you have this condition, then you know exactly what I am referring to.

What Causes Plantar Fasciitis

Often occurring in your middle age (I am 41), the start of heel spur symptoms (plantar fasciitis) results from stress placed on your foot over a long period of time.

In my own case, it started at my nieces christening ceremony last October (2010). However, I have always had heel arch problems, mainly resulting in lower back pain. And I believe that standing all day in a pair of flat, hard shoes caused pressure on the joints of my feet, and was the of the start of this chronic heel pain. Something which I never do – I normally wear casual soft shoes or sneakers! I was overweight at the time, which caused the inflammation to get worse.

But on my nieces big day, I wore a suit which required matching shoes (according to my partner!) On this blog, I’ll share what heel spur treatment has worked for me along with, tips for reducing the inflammation, with exercises you can do with your Achilles tendon, calf muscles, ankle and feet.