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11 Years of Plantar Fasciitis. Here's What I Finally Tried That Worked.

By Mike H. | Published March 2026

Eleven years.

I know that sounds like a number I'm rounding up for effect. I'm not. Eleven years of bilateral plantar fasciitis — both feet, every day. Eleven years of my first thought in the morning being a calculation about how bad it's going to be when my feet touch the floor.

I've told this story to three podiatrists, two physical therapists, and more Internet forums than I want to admit. I'm telling it again because something finally changed.

It started in 2014. I was 43, running half marathons, working warehouse operations — a guy who used his body and took it for granted. The arch pain came first in my left foot. Classic plantar fasciitis: stabbing with the first steps in the morning, better after 15 minutes of walking, back again by afternoon. I did the stretches. I bought the orthotics. It stuck around.

By 2017 my right foot was in it too. Bilateral.

I went through the standard escalation. First the insoles — I've had four sets of custom-molded orthotics. The first pair helped for maybe three months, then my body adjusted and we were back to baseline. I tried cortisone injections. Two of them. The first gave me six weeks of relief. The second made everything worse — I went from being able to function to barely walking for seven months. I've since read stories about people rupturing their plantar fascia from injections. I was lucky that didn't happen to me.

Shockwave therapy came next. Two rounds. The treatment itself was a 10 out of 10 on the pain scale — I white-knuckled the table and told myself I didn't care how much it hurt as long as it worked. It helped some. For a while. Then I was back where I started.

By year eight I'd added kneepads to my bad-day toolkit. That's what you do when you've run out of other options — you start crawling on your knees between the couch and the kitchen because putting weight on your feet is that bad. I did it alone, in my own house, before my family woke up. I never talked about it.

I want to be clear about something. At this point, I wasn't hoping for a cure. I wasn't expecting to run again. My goal was to get back to what I called "normal state of feels like crap but I can tolerate it." That was the dream — just tolerable. Just functional.

For the last two years I'd been using heat, ice rotation, and a TENS unit. Heat helped. Real, sustained heat applied directly to the bottom of my foot and ankle — not an ice pack, not anti-inflammatories. Heat. I'd read enough PF forums to know I wasn't alone in this: "heat always gave me a lot more relief than ice ever did" was a line I saw repeated so often I eventually stopped questioning it.

The TENS unit was interesting. Someone on r/PlantarFasciitis called it "magic" and, honestly? I understood why. The electrical stimulation did something — I could feel it interrupting the tension cycle in a way that stretching never had. But it was a separate device. Two separate sessions. Not always practical.

About six weeks ago I tried something called StrideFlex™. I was resistant, because I am always resistant to new things now. I've bought too many products that didn't work. But the specific thing that made me stop scrolling past it was this: it does both. Heat and EMS. At the same time. In one cordless wrap.

The mechanism explanation stopped me.

Most treatments for plantar fasciitis address the surface — they warm the skin, they cushion the step, they reduce surface inflammation. What I read about StrideFlex™ suggested something different: carbon fiber heating elements that penetrate deeper than a standard pad, reaching the fascia and tendon layer where the actual damage lives. Combined simultaneously with EMS vibration that activates muscle contractions and circulation. Not one, then the other. Both. Together.

I read that three times before I ordered it.

The first morning I used it, I wrapped it around my right ankle before getting out of bed. Sat with it for 20 minutes. The heat felt immediate and deep — different from my old heating pad in a way I couldn't immediately explain except that it seemed to go somewhere rather than just sit on top. The EMS pulse was gentle. Not unpleasant.

I stood up.

My right foot hit the floor and I waited for the greeting — the morning's opening shot of pain. It was still there. But I'd describe it as a 4 instead of an 8. I walked to the bathroom. Then to the kitchen. Then I stood at the counter and made coffee for ten minutes without my weight shifting the way it does when I'm managing pain without showing it.

That was six weeks ago. I've used it every morning since.

I am not cured. Both feet still have plantar fasciitis. I'm not running. But I've had two flares in six weeks instead of my average of one every ten days. My morning baseline has dropped. I can walk the warehouse floor for most of a shift before I need to sit. Last month I went to a hockey game with my son and we walked from the parking lot together — a quarter mile — at a normal pace.

I've tried everything under the sun short of surgery. I know that phrase because I wrote it once in a forum post at year nine, at my wit's end. For the first time in a long time, something is in the "working" column.

It's $59. It has a 30-day guarantee. If you've been in this for years and you're reading this at midnight wondering if anything will ever make a dent — try it.

I wish I had tried it sooner.