Foot Problems & Custom Orthotics

People are built like houses, and like in any structure that has to resist gravity, a shift in your foundation causes compensatory changes higher up. That is why we pay so much attention to foot and ankle problems in anyone who has pain or dysfunction anywhere in the body.

Foot and ankle problems are very common. Some researchers blame the fact that our shoes are designed for fashion rather than function, some blame the fact that we wear shoes instead of going barefoot, some blame the hard surfaces we walk on, and some even feel that human feet are not fully adapted to two-legged instead of four-legged gait.

Whatever the reasons, we find foot and ankle problems frequently, both as primary complaints and as complicating factors in all sorts of other issues. In fact, fixing feet is generally the most important thing we need to do for people with knee problems.

Because feet absorb a lot of pounding, and ankles are commonly twisted and sprained, we devote substantial attention to working on them with Matrix Repatterning manual therapy, and with anti-inflammatory electrotherapy modalities like microcurrent and laser.

And, because it’s so common for us to find people with collapsed arches in their feet, what we call hyperpronation, we have found that many people experience significant improvements throughout their bodies when we make them custom foot orthotics. Properly made orthotics have helped our patients with foot problems, knee problems, hip problems, low back problems, and even neck problems.

Please note, I mentioned properly made orthotics. There are many doctors, clinics, and even shoe stores that make rigid plastic orthotics. After testing their effect on our patients, we have found that even if they sometimes make feet feel better, they almost always make other areas worse. We actually have a collection of these rigid orthotics that people have turned in over the years, after they have found out how much better the flexible orthotics we made them have made them feel.