Chiropractic and Orthotics: Help the Feet - Help the Back

The Importance of Feet

You may never have stopped to think about your feet when dealing with ankle, knee, hip or back pain. After all, why would you? Believe it or not, a lot of the pain we experience in our weight-bearing joints is a direct result of what's going on with our feet. Here's why - the foot is a complex machine that depends on all of its 26 bones and all of its joints to work in harmony in order to provide the body with a stable foundation. When it works as designed, the foot will absorb shock as the heel strikes the ground, change shape to accommodate the varied terrain, then winds back up to be a firm, propulsive lever to advance forward motion. That is why many times, attending to the problems of the feet will help the back to become more stable.

How a Foot Works

When you break it down, there are two basic states of the foot: arch down and arch up. The arch down state happens when, after the heel strikes the ground, the foot unwinds inside and the arch does a free fall due to gravity. Most people are able to do this so well they overdo it. The arch up state comes next, because that is what makes the foot a rigid lever for push off. The foot must wind back up inside to raise the arch and stiffen itself. If the arch stays down you have to propel yourself forward with a mushy foot. That is not only tiring because your muscles have to work harder, it leads to the common foot pains and deformities that afflict millions every day, including bunions, plantar fasciitis, and pain in the balls of your feet known as metatarsalgia, to name a few.

The arch down state is important to absorb shock and adjust to uneven floor surfaces. But when it is overdone, the arch can't get back up. Going down hill is easy, but how does it get back up, into the arch up state? About 90% of the population can't get back up enough to have normal foot function. Assisted by gravity, body weight, muscle weakness and hard floors, the foot learns to unwind and flatten the arch ever closer to the ground, getting flatter with age. You may have heard this called over-pronation, which is just a fancy name for flat, flexible feet.

Orthotics - How & Why

A long time ago, people tried helping others with very flat feet by devising platforms that would fit in their shoes to hold up their arches. The only problem was they used solid steel, wood and solid chunks of leather - all of which felt like rocks under their feet and was not a good solution for flat feet. So common medical practice abandoned the idea of holding the arch up. To this day, the most common approach to helping the flat foot avoids direct arch contact and control. Instead cushions or wedges are used under the heel or forefoot to try to control the flattening foot, without directly contacting the arch at all. However this does not adequately address the problem of flat feet either.

Using a mechanical point of view, the only way you can effectively control the foot is to apply a force directly up under the arch. And thanks to modern plastics, we can do that comfortably today. Body Therapeutics works with a great orthotics company to create a custom, supportive platform for each foot that is rigid enough to achieve the arch up state, yet flexible enough to allow some small degree of flattening for shock absorption, terrain adaptation and yes - comfort!

Before we can make a truly custom device, we have to cast your feet in a very specific way in order to capture the corrected position we want the orthotic to impose on your foot. We also need to know how flexible your foot structure is and a description of your daily activities. All of this information will help us make an orthotic that can help control your feet.

Orthotics & Chiropractic

There are many routine treatments for foot problems, from anti-inflammatory pills to cortisone injections, to a zillion different pads, cushions, ointments and, of course, surgery. All of these have temporary, pain-relieving effects. But, if you want to permanently solve the problem, you must change the way your feet function on the ground. And the only way to do that is to use a true custom, biomechanical orthotic. Once you've corrected your foot function, using chiropractic to keep the spine aligned will greatly improve the health of your back.