I had PF years ago. I searched all the solutions, including surgery. What ended up working, on my internists advice, was incredibly inexpensive and effective. I got a few pair of Dr. Scholl's gel heel cup shoe inserts and wore them all the time. After a week or so, no more PF. I continued to wear them for about a year, then forgot to put them in another pair of shoes and had no problem
Greetings from a retired podiatrist: UK/AUS version (we don't do surgery like our US cousins).
All the advice above is good. EXCEPT the cortisone shots, do those more than a couple of times and they cause the bone to lose structure. Sure, stop the pain, but long term NO. Overuse has killed a lot of sporting careers.
ONE: Stretching, do the towel stretch BEFORE you get out of bed. The minute you put weight on the foot, it's too late. If you are sharing with an amenable partner, get him/her to massage the foot before putting weight on it.
TWO: Take a rest day. It's an amble, not a race.
THREE: The Gel cups are a great help. (Send me your address and I'll send you a clean, sterilized used, top of the range pair....if I can find them).
FOUR: Reverse heel, known to oldies like me as the Earth Shoe.
Needs practice, and yes, some crocs are like this. Wear in before going on any long walk.
FIVE: Check that you are not a 'toe walker'. Some people never let their heels touch the ground. Heel down every step. PRACTICE.
This can be caused by injury, I stepped on a round stone under the arch, and tore the plantar fascia (iitis=inflammation of). It took 18 months to heal, and I had the opportunity to try all the treatments, official and unofficial. By chance, I discovered the stretching before putting weight on it was the most effective by far, and strangely, for many people the most difficult to remember to do.
Age and a general stiffening of ligaments is the main cause. So stretch. This is why the itty bitty surgical slice of the tendons works. It is not a cut through, just an angled cut to lengthen the too tight tendon.
Othotics can help, but they are expensive and useless if you find them too uncomfortable to wear. Off the shelf and well padded, you can buy 'chiropodists felt' in various thicknesses and cut to size, comes with a sticky back. I took lots on my Le Puy to Cahors walk, and padded out a few peoples' shoes.
WHICH reminds me of the worse cases of bad shoes on the GR65 I saw were, not the shoes, but the feet. 2 black French people had the worse collection of blisters and shoe to foot damage I have ever seen. Of course this was the walking....on the long walk I thought about this and came to the conclusion that it was the feet, different genetically, the 'bump' of the heel is more pronounced, the wider forefoot, nice high arch, but high on the top of the foot, hence rubbing on the shoe tongue (pad with chiropodists' felt)...so if you are black...try on a lot of shoes...most shoes are made on lasts for narrow no heel bump European feet. Since most of the world's top runners are black, there must be shoes out there made for black feet. Just in Australia, very few people of any race or colour wear shoes if they can avoid it. We are the only white race that regularly goes barefoot.
Please, if you have a foot problem, see a podiatrist first. We only do feet, we are really good at feet, some of us love fungi (guilty), and some of us think we should 'do' hands too. But we are the FOOT experts. It exasperates me when people go to MDs for their foot problems, do you go to your MD for your tooth problems?