Plantar Fasciitis: Load, Stretch, Wait It Out, and Skip the Expensive Passive Stuff

Summary

Plantar fasciitis is largely self-limiting (roughly 80% resolve within a year, most within 6 to 18 months), and the levers that genuinely help are cheap and active: load management, calf and plantar-fascia stretching, progressive high-load calf and foot strengthening, supportive footwear, and weight loss where relevant, with patience doing much of the work; the expensive, passive options are oversold, because shockwave has a statistically fragile and clinically tiny effect that vanishes when you filter for high-quality trials, custom orthotics are no better than off-the-shelf for pain, cortico