Whether you’re a small size 6 or your friends joke about your clown shoes, your feet are still extremely small relative to their task. These compact appendages are not only responsible for supporting your entire body; they provide balance and mobility, which are critical to any athletic pursuit. If they fall short, you may be left on the sideline nursing an injury.
At Town Center Foot & Ankle, our team — led by board-certified podiatrist Stephen G. Eichelsdorfer, DPM — helps our athletic patients in Kingwood and Atascocita, Texas, stay in the game with injury-preventing custom orthotics.
Here’s how custom orthotics can help keep your feet free of sports injuries.
We want to start by differentiating between over-the-counter inserts and custom orthotics. If you’re engaged in physical activity, it’s paramount that your feet function properly. Problems like fallen arches, ankles that roll inward, and even bunions can offset the delicate balance in these extremities, creating stresses that weaken your feet and leave them prone to injury.
While an over-the-counter insert may keep you in the game longer by cushioning your feet, they aren’t doing much to correct any mechanical loading issues. With custom orthotics, we study your feet and your gait and take into consideration the stresses that you’re placing on your feet.
We don’t simply give you orthotics that fit your feet nicely; we mold them to relieve current and future stresses based on your unique demands.
One of the biggest complaints we hear from our active clients is sports-related foot pain. Your feet are designed to withstand a lot, but the extreme pressures that often come with sports may be too much for your feet to handle, leaving you with heel pain due to plantar fasciitis or tight tendons in your ankles, to name just two examples.
Foot pain of any kind is usually the result of too much stress in any one area, which we can relieve with custom orthotics, preventing a more serious injury from developing.
As we mentioned in the beginning of this blog, your feet are incredibly small compared to their enormous duties. This means that every bone, muscle, ligament, and tendon needs to work together to provide you with the support, balance, and mobility you need. If you have a structural issue that disrupts this extraordinarily complex and balanced system, the effect can cascade throughout your foot.
With custom orthotics, our goal is to ensure that every component in your foot is carrying its weight, quite literally. Custom orthotics even out the load, engaging every player, down to the tiniest muscles in your toes. With every component on board, your feet are functioning optimally, which helps you avoid injury.
If you have fallen arches, high arches, or any other condition that throws off your alignment, the effect can be felt far beyond your feet. These conditions can cause your ankles to roll inward or outward, throwing your ankles, knees and hips out of alignment. In fact, the effects can be felt as far up as your back.
Using custom orthotics, we’re able to re-establish alignment in your feet, setting everything straight from the ground up.
Whether you’re nursing a recent injury or you’re plagued by a chronic problem in your feet, custom orthotics position your feet so they can heal more quickly. By taking the pressure off of the injured or damaged area and transferring the workload elsewhere, your body can set to work to repair and rebuild itself more quickly and efficiently. By allowing your feet to heal more strongly after an injury, you can help avoid re-injury down the road.
If you’d like to learn more about preventing sports injuries with custom orthotics, please give us a call at one of our two locations or use the online scheduling tool to set up an appointment.
