Orthotics is a medical practice that focuses on the design as well as the application of orthoses. Your feet play a very important role when it comes to your overall health. The feet act as a strong base to the body when walking and standing. However, by wearing custom orthotics, your feet may benefit from additional support.
Benefits of Orthosis
- Orthotics can help increase mobility in feet
- Orthotics can help to reduce foot pain
- Orthotics can help protect as well as support a foot injury
- Orthotics may accommodate or correct a foot deformity
There are a wide variety of prefabricated and custom-made orthoses available that can help manage several MSK problems. Generally, orthotics are capable of providing arch support and realigning the structures of your leg and foot, as well as preventing tendon and muscle fatigue. Orthotics may also be used in correcting structural deformities.
How can Orthotics and Chiropractic care help you?
A chiropractor is trained to assess when and if custom orthotics can benefit you. As part of this assessment, the evaluation of a chiropractor may include observation, functional analysis, gait analysis and orthopaedic and neurological testing. This helps your chiropractor to determine whether custom orthotics are suitable for you or not. At times off-the-shelf orthotics may be best suited to meet your needs and goals.
Chiropractors consider your body as a whole. When assessing knee pain, for example, your chiropractor will also evaluate the function of your foot, ankle, hip and back. Interestingly, people who often benefit the most from custom orthotics may not only present with foot pain but also a pain in their low back, hip, knee or ankle. A comprehensive look at these biomechanics is reflected when training to be a chiropractor.
The underlying problem does not always originate from the root of pain — having a foot dysfunction (for instance, overpronation) may result in pain in other areas of your body. Chiropractic training value in orthotics field, when considering therapeutic options available, involves assessing the whole lower kinetic chain for people who have non-foot pain.
Effective treatment for LBP
Chiropractors have long prescribed custom orthotics to patients with the understanding that lower back pain (LBP) treatment might work perfectly when addressing not only your back but also your ankles, knees, hips and/or feet.
Using orthotics in balancing and supporting your feet, which is the foundation of your body, can help to balance and support your spine. Custom orthotics, together with chiropractic care, can be a very powerful first-line treatment when it comes to the battle against LBP.
Back pain is now regarded as a global epidemic; experts estimate that 80 per cent of the population in the world will suffer from LBP at some point in their lives. If you are looking to avoid over-the-counter medication for relieving pain, which comes with serious side effects, chiropractic care combined with custom orthotics can be an alternative worth considering.
Studies support spinal adjustment for LBP. Also, according to new guidelines published in February 2017 by the ACP (American College of Physicians), spinal adjustment is recommended as a first choice treatment for LBP.
