Your feet are an essential part of our body that have to last you a life time. Most foot conditions can be detected, treated and managed successfully. By caring for your feet they will carry you far in life.

When looking for a shoe there’s a couple of things that we’ll typically look for. You want to look and make sure that there’s a nice strong heel to the shoe, so if you squish and try to push on the heel it shouldn’t move. You want where the shoe bends to match where your foot bends, which is usually up by the ball of the foot.

                             
So if you take the shoe and push it from either end. It should bend a little bit up in here. You don’t want the shoe to bend or twist in through the middle part. So if you take the shoe and try to twist it, you shouldn’t get any movement out of that part there.

When you’re fitting the shoe with an insole, if it’s a full length insole, like this sort of thing, you want to make sure that the insole of the shoe comes out. If you’re fitting a shorter insole, you can just generally put it in on top of the liner that’s already in there.

When you’re fitting the shoe with or without an orthotic, you want to make sure that the top of the shoe doesn’t interfere with the ankle bones at all. Seeing a local family physician or  a local  physiotherapist can help with inflammation and fatigue. Seeing a registered Dietician for advise on foods that cause inflammation could help.

Whether you’re fitting a short or a longer insole you want to make sure that you have it with you when you go to buy new shoes. And you want to make sure that when everything’s in, your foot’s in, you should have a half-thumbs-width to a thumbs-width between the end of your longest toe and the end of the shoe, its not always your big toe, it could be your second toe.

And you want to make sure that your foot’s not sort of bulging over the sides of the sole of the shoe. That’s an indication that your foot’s too wide and you should go up a width. And you want to also make sure that on the inside there’s nothing that’s irritating – no seams or anything like that. If you have an improper shoe or an inappropriate shoe for either the activity that you’re doing or the style of shoe i guess then it can cause injury to the foot. And so it’s best to get a proper fitted shoe from a store that knows what they’re doing, and won’t just sell you the prettiest shoe off the rack, that they’re actually going to sell you the shoe that’s best for you. Presenter: Ms. Jody Weightman, Pedorthist, Vancouver, BC

Local Practitioners: Pedorthist

Well plantar fasciitis is the inflammation of the tissue that runs along the bottom of the foot, called the plantar fascia. It’s the aponeurosis or tendon-like structure that runs along the bottom of the foot, inserts in the back portion here of the calcaneus, the calcaneal tubercle then fans out to the forefoot. The way that this comes about is by usually just the irritation, maybe some blunt trauma to the area, repetitive stress either through running or either through an increased activity or weight gain.

Can be an indication in any pronated foot, so when the foot collapses, or a supinated foot, if we have a high arch or a high-structured foot.

Well if you thought you have plantar fasciitis, you first want to go see your family physician. From there, you want to have a diagnosis and then them to refer you to your local pedorthist.

From there a pedorthist will assess and treat for your plantar fascia pain. It could be the use of custom foot orthotics, maybe an over-the-counter product, and that can be in the form of types of splinting, plantar fascia night splints to hold your foot in a certain position at night. May be looking at physiotherapy, massage, active release technique.

Those are the individuals that you want to see outside of the pedorthic realm of treatment.  Presenter: Mr. Mike Neugebauer, Pedorthist, Langley, BC

Now Health Network Local Practitioners: Pedorthist