While the spine is the focal point of chiropractic care, often the feet can suffer from musculoskeletal issues that impact our spinal alignment and cause problems. While podiatrists often treat the feet, chiropractic foot care considers all aspects of the nervous system and its ability to communicate with the entire body. The foot, due to its role in stability and mobility, is often heavily demanded by our ever evolving daily needs from maintaining balance while moving to simply standing upright. Feet are often prone to issues due to high forces during motion and multiple joints within the foot leading to the feet becoming misaligned, which can affect our stance and gait through impacting motion at the knees, hips, and back.
How Foot Misalignment Impacts Our Spine
Foot misalignment can cause a wide range of issues when uncared for and left untreated. Subluxations, or joint misalignment, are some of the main causes of the tingling, numbing, and painful sensations we often experience throughout the neck, spine, and hips. Abnormal subluxations in the feet can also have this impact, which in turn can create inflammatory responses and musculoskeletal issues that last a lifetime when ignored. As chiropractors, understanding the importance of body mechanics is what we specialize in, meaning that the feet’s mobility, flexibility, and stability all have to be taken into account to treat conditions related to the hips, knees, and spine.
Why do the feet matter? How the feet support us during daily activities, especially those who have long-hour jobs that involve constant movement and standing, can cause the feet to take a beating. Activities that require consistent and extensive footwork can impact the spine by irritating the nerves and muscles due to overexertion. Activities of this manner can also cause misalignment in the spine and hips, which exacerbate the issue even further. Studies from the Journal of Chiropractic Medicine have shown that foot orthopedic devices combined with chiropractic care can improve functional performance and relieve symptoms.
Foot Pain and Chiropractic Relief
Foot alignment and chiropractic care go hand in hand, and there are many conditions that often affect spinal alignment by extension. Foot care considers these factors, and through chiropractic adjustments, it can help correct your gait and stance when dealing with problems such as:
- Ball of foot pain: The balls of our feet often handle much of our weight distribution, and when any of the long forefront bones are out of alignment, it can interfere with that weight distribution. Ball foot pain that persists can also lead to Morton’s Neuroma and metatarsalgia, causing foot deformities.
- Heel Pain: Heel pain often persists due to poor biomechanics or can be affected by spine problems such as sciatica. Foot conditions such as plantar fasciitis often result from an imbalance in spinal alignment and require correction.
- Lateral Foot Pain: Pain along the outside of the mid-foot can be caused by the cuboid bone being out of alignment. This misalignment can cause problems with weight distribution, which can inadvertently cause the muscles throughout the lower half of the body to shoot pain to the spine.
- Ankle Pain: Sprains and strains throughout the ankles, which support the joints in our bodies, can lead to heavy amounts of instability to the muscles and joints in the legs and spine. This instability can create subluxations of the joint, which can be corrected through manipulation techniques.
Pain in our feet and ankles can seriously impact our ability to live our best lives. When you seek treatment for foot pain from our office, you’ll be taking the first step in getting back to your active lifestyle and optimized health.
