Your feet are paramount to your mobility, so you want to make sure that they’re in optimal health. Taking steps to prevent common and uncomfortable foot conditions, such as bunions, hammertoes, and plantar fasciitis, is key to preserving pain-free mobility. Fortunately, custom orthotics can play an essential role in that endeavor.
In this month’s blog post, the team of podiatrists here at Neuhaus Foot and Ankle, with 10 locations throughout Tennessee, takes a closer look at the preventive benefits of custom orthotics.
Look down at your feet and appreciate how such small areas provide so much — they support your entire body and allow mobility. To successfully accomplish these tasks, each of your feet contains 26 bones, 30 joints, and more than 100 muscles, tendons, and ligaments.
For the complex system to function optimally, it’s essential that every component is able to contribute, which means your feet rely on balance.
Unfortunately, our love affair with inappropriate footwear (think heels and shoes with pointy toes) can offset that balance, as can overstressing your feet, leaving these small appendages far more vulnerable to common foot problems, including:
While these conditions are confined to your feet, structural imbalances can cause problems in other major joints, such as your ankles, knees, and hips.
With orthotics, our goal is to get your feet back into more natural and balanced positions. These inserts are designed to ensure that each component in your feet carries its weight, quite literally, and that no one area is overstressed.
While there’s no shortage of over-the-counter orthotics, we caution against these options as you may not receive the benefit you need.
With our custom orthotics, we design the insert to match your feet exactly and then we can tweak the orthotic to meet your unique demands.
For example, if you’re a runner, you’re more at risk for developing plantar fasciitis. If you want to avoid this painful condition, we can design orthotics for your running shoes that provide a little more arch support to take some of the pressure off of your plantar fascia.
Or, perhaps you have arthritis or another issue, such as a bunion or a hammertoe. These conditions are progressive and can cause irreversible structural changes in your feet. At the first signs of a problem, we can supply you with custom orthotics that will help slow or halt the condition by restoring balance in your feet.
Another scenario in which custom orthotics can play a valuable role is if you have a condition like diabetes. With custom orthotics, our goal is to eliminate any stress points that can damage your feet.
Lastly, perhaps you’re having trouble in your knees or hips in the form of joint pain. With custom orthotics, we can rebalance these joints, which can improve your symptoms and prevent wear-and-tear on these essential joints.
If you want to add custom orthotics to your all-important foot health arsenal, we invite you to contact one of our offices in Hermitage, Brentwood, Nashville, Mount Juliet, Waverly, Smyrna, Gallatin, Columbia, Pulaski, or Lebanon, Tennessee, to set up an appointment.
