Your feet are two of your body’s most astonishing engineering marvels, as these small structures are responsible for supporting the entire weight of your body and getting you where you need to go. If you want to give your beleaguered feet a little help this year, custom orthotics are a great choice.
As musculoskeletal experts, the team here at Genesis Orthopaedic and Spine appreciates how hard your feet work, and we want to do everything we can to preserve (and improve) their function, not to mention offset foot pain. To accomplish both, one of our frontline recommendations are custom orthotics.
In order to understand the role that orthotics can play in helping your feet, it’s helpful to understand foot anatomy.
Between both of your feet, they contain nearly one-quarter of the bones in your body — more specifically, each foot contains 26 bones. Keeping this complex network of small bones together are 30 joints and more than 100 muscles, tendons, and ligaments.
In order for your feet to function optimally, each of these small parts needs to, quite literally, carry its weight and lend support to the whole foot. Conversely, when certain areas or components in your feet aren’t functioning properly, it can throw off the balance in your feet, which can lead to structural and potentially painful problems, such as:
Not only can an imbalance affect the function of your foot, it can create a domino effect that reaches your ankles, knees, hips, and even your lower back.
One of the best ways to restore balance to your feet is through custom orthotics, which are inserts that you place in your shoes. We tailor these orthotics to your specific foot needs.
For example, if you have bunions, which are caused by a misalignment in your metatarsophalangeal joint, we can turn to orthotics to slow or halt this shift in the joint.
Or, perhaps you’re developing problems with tendinitis in your Achilles tendon or your posterior tibial tendon. With orthotics, we can better support these tendons.
Ultimately, we customize your orthotics to the needs of your feet, which may be relief of existing pain or discomfort or as a way to prevent pain in the first place by providing more support for your feet.
If you’d like to step into the new year with happier, healthier feet, please contact our offices in Westfield or West Orange, New Jersey, to learn more about the many ways that custom orthotics can help.
