When the first step in the morning results in pain, how can the rest of your day go well? Despite the continuous movement and immense body weight, your heels hold their shape. They are made up of fatty tissues which provide a padded cushion to your feet.

Heel pain can have several reasons ranging from ill-fitting shoes, obesity, running or jumping on hard surfaces, injuries and abnormal style of walking to any underlying diseases. In the morning, after a peaceful sleep, when you feel some pain under the heels, that could possibly be because of a condition called plantar fasciitis. Make sure to visit some foot and ankle specialist Orange County instead of just suffering in silence.

You can avail wound care Orange County by making an appointment with Sima Soltani Podiatry Office in Irvine, Orange County. The very experienced podiatrist specializes in treatments of feet and ankles without any operative procedures.

Heel pain can be experienced by anyone, but some people are at high risk of heel pain. 

They are:

• People who are obese
• Pregnant women
• Middle aged people
• Children from age eight to thirteen
• People who are standing for long hours of day
• People who are physically active

Before you get out of bed, there are certain things that you can do to warm-up and stretch your feet once you wake up. 

Let’s have a look at the three easy steps in order to avoid such pain while lying in bed:

• Stretch the arch of your foot

While lying down on bed, wrap a towel to the front of your foot while straightening your leg in the air. Using both hands, pull on the towel to stretch ball of ankle and foot, letting your knee straight so that the foot is positioned pointing towards your nose.

• Drawing an air alphabet using your toes

This exercise awakens the deep muscles in the foot. Use the toe as your pointer and trace an alphabet as if writing in sand.

• Toe crunches

Perform the crunches by curling your toes downwards, as if you’re trying to pick up something by sulcus of the toes. This exercise helps by directly strengthening the muscles beneath the ligament.

It is noticed that people suffering from feet pain experience high level of pain at night, resulting in difficulty of falling asleep or waking up from the sleep due to severe pain. We all know how important sleep is for the body to recharge and regain the energy. Therefore, something should be done to remedy the feet pain. To get a good night sleep and reduction in feet pain, it is advisable to follow nighttime routine.

Following are things to add in your nighttime routine to reduce the feet pain:

• Stretching-

You can easily perform some simple stretches to ease your pain, loosen tight ligaments and improve blood circulation. They are:

Sit on the bed with legs together and straight, point to your toes while extending the feet, this should be done ten times

Next, get a pillowcase and wrap it around the ball of your foot and hold the ends of the pillowcase with hands and gently pull the pillowcase towards the torso. This will help in flexing the foot and bending your knees. This position is to be held for thirty seconds.

Lastly, sit crisscrossed on the bed with one hand gently pulling the toes back and the other one holding the ball of the foot.

• Lift up your legs-

The elevation of legs at least six feet above the heart will result in reduced inflammation along with improving blood circulation from legs to the body. You can use a thick pillow or a bed wedge to elevate your legs while sleeping.

• Massaging the feet using tennis ball-

Keep a tennis ball handy at your bedside so when you wake up at night due to foot pain it will be within your reach. Do this exercise with tennis ball:

Sit on the bed with your feet touching the ground, place the ball on the floor and roll it around with your foot from heel to the arch and to the ball of your foot. Do this with one foot for a minute and proceed to do the same with the other foot. Also while rolling the ball focus on specific pain points.

This exercise will help improve the blood flow and disrupt the nerve pain signals. 

Some preventions that you can take to avoid further heel pain is wearing a shoe that fits you perfectly and with shock absorbent soles, always warm-up and cool-down when exercising, tap or strap the feet for supporting the muscles and ligaments as shown by podiatrist and lastly use orthoses for long term feet support as fitted by podiatrist.

One other thing for you to do before standing up on your feet from bed, plant your feet firmly on the ground, allowing the ligament to fully stretch. If this simple routine does not help you alleviate your uneasiness, it is a wise choice to get yourself evaluated by a professional in any reputed Orange County wound care.