3 Signs You May Need Custom Orthotics
By Anthony Allen, CPED
If you find yourself experiencing persistent foot pain, discomfort, or irregularities in your gait, you may need custom orthotics to provide the support your feet require.
Custom orthotics are specialized insoles designed to address individual foot conditions and biomechanical issues. Recognizing the signs that indicate a need for these personalized solutions is crucial for maintaining optimal foot health. In this article, I’ll explore three distinct signs that may suggest you need custom orthotics, helping you understand when it’s time to seek professional assistance from Certified Pedorthist for improved comfort and overall well-being.
Your shoes wear out unevenly causing your ankles to fall inwards or outwards.
If your shoes wear out heavily breaking down on the inside or outside of your soles, you may have unstable arches, are standing improperly or, are wearing the wrong kind of footwear.
The first thing mentioned are your arches in your feet. Feet break down and change as we get older and contribute to uneven shoe wear and can cause issues not only in your feet but, also the joints of your ankles, knees, hips and back.
Usually, your shoes will break down inwards when your arches start breaking down. You need a shoe to control overpronation (your arches breaking down), these shoes are called motion-controlled shoes, or you may need custom orthotics (medical grade arch support) to stop your foot from collapsing inward. If you have your shoes breaking down on the outsides, then your body may be trying to find the most stable position for your foot to be in to control the arch collapse. Your body is trying to control the problem of collapsing arches by standing on the outsides of your feet to make them stiffer (Supinated). People who are born with high arches (Pes Cavus foot), may also break down their shoes on the on outsides, rolling their ankles outwards.
A lot of people who have foot issues or a high arch will wear corrective footwear and cause them to break down their shoes in 3-4 months because of incorrect footwear. You need to go to a specialist like myself who understands shoes so that you can be out in the correct footwear and get the most life out of your shoes, saving you money and discomfort in the long run.
You may need custom orthotics You experience foot, leg, or back pain
In a previous article, “Getting Old Is Not for the weak”, I wrote about how Everybody here in the Tucson desert knows that as we get older, we might feel the onset of arthritis, become unstable and lose balance, and/or start having pain and problems that were not there before and how they just seem to creep up on you.
Our feet make up a small percentage of our body mass, a measly 2% to be exact. That 2% is holding up the rest of our body mass (98%). This makes our feet the foundation to our bodies and when our feet start spreading out, they usually break down unevenly causing the alignment of our body to change affecting the joints, muscles, tendons, ligaments. This leads to all of the above becoming stressed, causing damage, causing pain.
In this situation, Custom Orthotics provider in Tucson like Simply Feet will help correct the break down and change in your feet and put them back to where they need to be so your body can improve its alignment and restore the proper biomechanics that will make you feel have less or no pain at all depending on how much damage you’ve caused and how well your body can repair itself. It’s smart to consult a medical doctor if you still have problems after trying custom orthotics.
Weak ankles or balance and stability issues
As our feet change and become over-pronated, that causes us to become stuck with an over-pronated foot, which is like standing on a mattress or trampoline all the time. How much balance can you really have standing on feet that are broken down and too flexible? Its pretty much impossible to not drag your feet or feel unstable with your arches being broken down. What makes matters worse is that your feet will start to over-correct themselves and start to stand in a stiffer position (Supinated) which controls the flexible breakdown of your feet but make you lose your side-to-side stability. This is a huge reason people fall and can break a bone.
When your feet change and cause painful problems, it changes the way you stand, the only remedy is to get something to control the arch breakdown or the way you stand to take care of problems. This is a perfect reason to you need custom orthotics, they’ll restore the arches to a healthier position and control your ankles from rolling outwards in your body’s attempt to control the problem.
Consult your doctor or a Certified Pedorthist in Tucson if you’re having any of these issues and may need custom orthotics, because the simple truth is that too many people suffer needlessly when you could be enjoying your life and not being held back by pain and instability.
Our motto here at Simply Feet is “Live Life Pain Free” and we stand by that. Gove us a call today to schedule an evaluation and custom orthotics fitting, and live life pain free.
