I got a DM about plantar fasciitis today (today, the day I'm writing this, not today, the day you're reading this).
Does that even matter? Haha. I digress ...
She has unbearable heel pain in the morning, worsening after sitting, and it gets better once she moves around a bit. She’d been told it’s plantar fasciitis and to stretch it, ice it, maybe roll it out, and “be patient.”
And then she added something that stuck with me.
“I started walking more because I’m trying to be healthier… but now my heel is angry all the time.”
That part! I see this so often with women right now. There’s this shift happening where people are finally taking more steps, getting more consistent, trying to 'do the right thing'… and then the body pushes back in a very specific place. A workout injury. A heel / arch / bottom of the foot situation where it suddenly feels like you're stepping on glass in the morning.
Plantar fasciitis is what we call it when that thick band under your foot gets irritated. It runs from your heel to your toes and handles every step well, usually. And then one day it doesn't.
Most of the standard advice is actually decent at the surface level.
A physical therapist will usually tell you to reduce your daily step count for a bit, not eliminate movement but stop spiking it. They’ll often recommend calf stretching because the calf and foot are basically sharing tension through the same line. Strengthening the small intrinsic foot muscles must be part of the picture. Rolling the bottom of the foot on a frozen water bottle or tennis ball can help calm down local irritation. Sometimes night splints are suggested to keep the fascia from tightening too aggressively while you sleep. And footwear changes might be necessary so the load isn’t dumping into one small area every single step.
A lot of people skip the most important part of that -- the reduction in load!
What I’m seeing right now especially this time of year is women going from maybe 3–5k steps a day to 10–12k almost overnight because they’re finally “being good,” and the body doesn’t interpret that as health yet. Instead, it's a sudden demand on tissue that might have been hanging on by a threadddddd for a long time.
But let's get weird for a minute ...
Plantar fasciitis is also something that happens when the whole network of connective tissue finally expresses overload in the place that gets the most mechanical attention. The heel / bottom of the foot is thee messenger, but the message is coming from everywhere.
The fascia system is continuous. It's really cool! It’s this one long web that distributes force from your neck all the way down to your toes. So when someone says “my heel hurts,” what I hear is “this is where the system decided to reveal itself.”
That makes me curious about more than just the foot. How metabolically flexible is this person? Are blood sugar levels swinging all over the place? Is collagen getting the nutrients and signals it needs to remodel well? Are they in perimenopause or menopause, where falling estrogen can reduce collagen production, alter connective tissue quality, and slow recovery? (Not that menopause causes plantar fasciitis, but it may explain why so many women notice old aches, tendon issues, or stubborn foot pain showing up around this stage of life.) Fascia isn't just a band under your foot — it's one continuous network wrapping around muscles, tendons, nerves, blood vessels, and organs throughout the entire body. When one area starts complaining, I always wonder what else the system is trying to tell us. That's also why I like supporting healing from multiple angles ... rebuilding capacity with progressive calf raises, intrinsic foot strengthening (think toe yoga or towel scrunches), improving ankle mobility, keeping blood sugar stable with protein-, fiber-, and movement-based habits, and even using red light therapy, which has evidence for supporting tissue healing and reducing pain. None of these are magic fixes on their own, but together they create an environment where connective tissue has a much better chance of recovering instead of just barely surviving.
And then I start thinking about what’s been happening underneath that.
We know mechanically that plantar fasciitis is load exceeding recovery capacity. That part is pretty straightforward. Tissue gets micro-damaged faster than it can rebuild. The area near the heel gets especially irritated because that’s where a lot of force concentrates with every step.
We also know collagen tissue adapts to repeated stress. It gets stronger with appropriate loading and more disorganized when the pattern is too much, too fast, or too repetitive without variation. So on a purely mechanical level, the fix is almost always about recalibrating load.
But that's not the whole conversation. Local issues are more often than not more system-based.
Who is dealing with PF the most? It’s often women who are actively trying to improve their health! They arer walking more, intentionally increasing movement, and sometimes that consistency gets layered on top of a system that hasn’t rebuilt capacity yet.
Fascia doesn’t care about your fat loss or step goals. It does, however, respond to capacity.
When the body is metabolically flexible, it shifts between fuel sources smoothly, inflammation stays down, and tissues tend to recover faster between stress cycles. In this case, movement feels easier to absorb.
When metabolic flexibility isn't so great, everything becomes a little slower to recover -- collagen turnover, fluid exchange in fascia, and tissue repair are all less responsive. The fascia gets dehydrated, stiff, and more likely to crack under pressure.
When you add a sudden spike in steps on top of that, the foot becomes the place where you notice.
This is where I start thinking differently from what most people are told in clinic settings. A lot of care stays focused on the foot itself. The plan becomes to stretch, strengthen, and support it. Those are real levers that shouldn't be ignored! But that's just part of the story.
I’ve seen cases where people do everything right locally and the issue keeps coming back until something more upstream changes.
Here’s what I would actually tell someone in real life (isn't this real life too? I guess I mean in person?) ...
Pull steps back temporarily if you recently increased them. The tissue needs a chance to catch up. When feeling better, dial it back up g-r-a-d-u-a-l-l-y.
Still do the boring things that actually work. Calf mobility, slow strengthening of the foot muscles, gentle loading instead of aggressive stretching, frozen water bottle rolls if it calms things down. and supportive shoes during flare-ups so you’re not constantly re-irritating the same spot will likely be part of your plan.
Pay attention to how it feels after rest versus after load. That difference tells you a lot about recovery capacity!
And then ...
...zoom out further.
If this keeps happening, or if it showed up alongside other signs like stubborn fatigue, blood sugar swings, increase in belly fat, or feeling like recovery from workouts is slower than it should be… I start thinking less about the foot and more about metabolic flexibility.
I know no one is telling you that about plantar fasciitis. But that's why we're friends, right? I tell you weird stuff about your body so you feel better and can go crush the rest of your life.
Anyway, The Metabolic Edge is where we go deeper in things like symptoms, metabolism, recovery, hormones, movement, nutrition so it. all starts making sense in the same conversation instead of separate boxes. The body rarely speaks in isolated symptoms! Doors aren’t currently open, but there’s a waitlist for the August cohort if you don’t want to miss it next time.
If you want something more tailored and hands-on, that’s exactly what 1:1 coaching is for. You can explore details like availability, pricing, and apply here.
Stay wild + well,
Tara
P.S. In case you missed it
When I'm having a bad day
Pizza nachos!
P.P.S. What I'm loving lately
Handmade cards! It started as a little experiment about a year and a half ago… just wondering how much money we’d save if we stopped buying them and made them instead. And now I don’t want to go back. I’ve been drawing little personalized pictures, adding jokes + random memories, and it just feels so much more real than anything off a shelf. There are a few exceptions, like heavier moments where something more traditional feels right, but otherwise I could get used to this way of doing things.
This acupressure mat for circulation and with our PF topic in mind today, it can be really helpful for increasing healing blood flow to the foot and heel. I sometimes roll my feet on the pillow part when I'm working at my desk for a little habit-stacking situation.
This red light therapy device. I love it, use it daily, my family uses it often. It's portable, 3rd party tested for safety and efficacy, and is ONE device I can use for everything -- face, whole body, local issues (like the feet!), overall mood, circadian rhythm, and metabolism. It has a long battery life which seems unimportant but matters to me! Haha. It works on the level of the mitochondria, so any organ, system, or cellular process that requires energy (ahem ... that's all of them!) can be improved with red light therapy. This is why there's thousands of research papers touting its benefits and why there will be thousands more as scientists discover the mechanisms transfer over to many more areas. It's an absolute staple in our family for illness, pain, healing, scrapes, scars, skin, period cramps, surgery recovery, bellyaches, ear aches, foot pain, back pain, knee pain, bug bites, sunburns, rashes, eczema, psoriasis, acne, collagen production, thyroid healing, scalp / hair regrowth, you name it! It's an investment for sure, but if you're ready to have this universal tool in your home too, my link here gets you 43% off right now.
