This is a transcript of a Dr. Jay Show about orthotics broadcast on AM 1560 in Houston, TX.
Dr. J. Michael Bennett is a Board Certified Orthopedic Surgeon and a Fellowship Trained Sports Medicine Physician serving patients from Katy, Fort Bend County, Metro Houston and Southeast Texas from offices in Houston and Sugar Land, TX.
Call 281-633-8600 for an appointment at our Sugar Land office and 713-234-3152 for an appointment at our Houston office. Dr. Bennett’s special guest for this episode of the Dr. Jay Show was Dr. Mark Vann, a Board Certified Orthopedic Surgeon specializing in foot and ankle injuries.
Dr. J. Michael Bennett: Welcome back. This is Saturdays with Dr. Jay, sponsored by the Texas Sports Medicine Institute. Before the break we were talking about shoe wear, and I think that makes a huge difference. In a lot of my patients, no matter what I’m seeing them for – if it’s back pain, knee pain, hip pain – I look at their feet first. It sounds crazy. Some are like, “I’m here for my back or my knee, why are you looking at my feet?”
Well, you’ve got to think of your body almost as a linked chain. It starts at the ground and works its way up. If you have a patient that walks in and they have knee pain and hip pain and they take their shoes off and their feet kind of roll out like a penguin, that’s a problem. That basically means like Dr. Vann mentioned, they have no arch support and their feet are rolling outward. What we call that is pronation of the feet.
When the feet are basically turning inward those are called supinated feet. So you’ve got to get the correct shoe wear. Not all feet are created equal. And if you’re running out there without an arch support and your feet are turning outward or running on the outside of your foot … I mean, I had that personally myself. I would run occasionally and I started getting some really bad foot pain on the outside of my foot and I found out I was running on the outside of my foot.
The way to determine if that’s what you are doing is take a look at the bottom of your sneaker and see what’s worn down. If part of the sneaker is worn down and it’s not evenly distributed, that’s the part that you’re running out and that’s the part that you’re wearing down.
So you probably need to get something that’s going to help balance out your foot so you’re not overloading a particular area of the foot and irritating those tendons. I actually went to one of those shops and they put me on a treadmill and had me run a little
 |
bit and then gave me some orthotics and it made a big difference.
I think it’s key to get evaluated. You can go see your orthopedic surgeon and they can make a script for some orthotics or you can go to one of those running places and they can evaluate you as well in regards to your gait and your running and your walking.
In regards to orthotics, Dr. Vann, what do you prefer? I know there’s a number of different orthotics out there, some that are custom made, some that you can buy over the counter, there’s some that are cork, some that are plastic, what do you recommend?
Dr. Mark Vann: My personal preference is going to be the dense-foam or the cork type of orthotics. The hard plastic ones, they are common and I don’t think we’ve ever proven that one is better than the other, but from the standpoint of comfort, most of the patients that I’ve prescribed the dense-foam ones to seem to do a lot better.
Now as far as custom orthotics versus off the shelf. The difference that I make is always based on the severity of the person’s deformity; and when I say deformity, I’m just talking about a flat foot or a high-arched foot. If they’ve got a severely high-arched foot, in that case I would almost always recommend a custom one. But there are off-the-shelf orthotics that can be used by those that have a mild to moderately high-arched foot. For people with severely flattened feet I’d definitely recommend custom orthotics.
Dr. J. Michael Bennett: If you’re not sure if it’s mild, moderate or severe, that’s when it helps to have a Sports Medicine Specialist look at your feet and basically make that call.
If you’d like Dr. Bennett to help evaluate your posture and gait and determine if you need orthotics, please call our Sugar Land office at 281-633-8600 or call our Houston office at 713-234-3152.
