While flying home from a medical conference, I noticed that airplane shopping magazines have everything. You can buy jackknife watches, home acupuncture kits, and even the world’s largest crossword puzzle. Amazing! You may notice that the magazine is full of advertisements for healthcare products. You can buy hearing aids, back adjusters and tons of different foot products. All while flying thousands of miles above your doctor’s office. So how reliable are these products?
Almost everyone has achy feet. Studies have shown that 75% of the American population has at least one foot problem. What a great market! Though we all have achy feet, there are thousands of reasons why our feet hurt. Do these products address your problem? If you have achy feet and have not yet seen a podiatric physician then I highly recommend that you refrain from wasting your money on products. If you have heel pain, it is not always planter fasciitis. Unless you have a diagnosis from your podiatric physician, you should not be using products to treat any foot disorder.
What if you have a diagnosis? When a doctor diagnosis’s you with a disorder, they develop a treatment plan that treats you and your specific conditions. Podiatric physicians know more about the foot and ankle than any other profession. With a combination of education and experience, podiatric physicians can map out a step by step process that will give you the best road to recovery. If you use products that are not a part of their treatment plan, you may interfere with your own healing! Talk to your doctor before trying something new. It may hurt you more than it will help you. Also, make sure to talk to your doctor about products you have used in the past. This is valuable information for the doctor because it may be the reason you are still or again experiencing problems.
What if your doctor already talked to you about using a product? Your doctor should discuss their treatment plan with you. High in the air, you see a devise that looks just like the one he showed you in the office. Should you take advantage of the low prices in the sky? Just because two products look the same, does not mean they are made the same. There is constantly being new products developed and researched but not all foot products have reliable studies to back up their claims. Many of the products that podiatric physicians provide are only found in physician offices and often a special licenses and education is needed to provide such products. These products always have legitimate studies that approves their use, but only someone who has training can really determine if it is the right product for you. Your foot is very complex and the devices and products provided in the doctor’s office are made with your foot’s anatomy and biomechanics in mind. Many of the products you find outside of the office are made with your pocketbook in mind.
Here are some helpful hints to guide you through the foot mall. Shoes should be made to support your feet not to fit in your back pocket. If you can fold the shoe or sandal up to a compactable size it is probably not going to support your foot well. There is a country song that says “Shoes don’t stretch and men don’t change.” Maybe you forgot but shoes come in multiple sizes. If they don’t fit buy the next size up. Let that “I’ll change for you” boy buy the shoe stretcher. Check your doctor’s website for products. Your podiatric physician can provide you with products approved by the American Podiatric Medical Association. Your physician is not there to take advantage of you; they are there to make you feel better. They provide you with a product because it is in their treatment plan to make you better. Most other places do not care if get better as long as you buy.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
The Effect of Ankle Injuries on Your March Madness Office Pool
There are two things for which March is known: green beer and basketball. This week, Americans are enjoying both. Whether you are a twelve year old boy or a grandma involved in the nursing home pool, it seems like everyone is talking about March madness. But did you know that just the last week there were five foot or ankle injuries among the players competing in the NCAA tournament. Before you turn in your bracket, you may want to take some of these injuries into consideration.
Robert Sacre, Gonzaga Bulldogs; Liam mcMorrow,Marquette Golden Eagles; Ty Lawson, North Carolina Tar Heels; Teondre Williams, Oregon Ducks; and Jonnie West, West Virginia Mountaineers have all had foot or ankle injuries within the last week and all of their teams have advanced into the tournament. Whether or not these injuries will affect the teams is questionable, but what we should be asking is why these injuries are happening so late in the season. At this point, the athletes should be at their prime strength, so why are the falling apart?
Basketball, like all sports, puts significant stress on your body especially your foot. Running causes an increase in forces on your foot and ankle three to six times your body weight. When a forward goes up for a rebound, they come down to contact the ground with a forces six times their body weight. Our body is designed to compromise and adjust for these forces, but if we do them too fast, we can cause damage to our body. This is why athletes go through training. Even with the best training, such as that provided to college athletes, your body can still get injured!
Ankle sprains are the injury seen most often on the court. Once an athlete has one ankle sprain, they are much more likely to have another one because the ligaments are weekend. Ligaments are small fibrous bands of tissue that connect bones to other bones. This along with muscles allows the skeletal system to have a considerable amount of stability. If a ligament gets stretched or injured, it will never recover to have the same amount of strength that it did before the injury. Therefore, once you have an ankle injury, you are much more prone to have one in the future.
So why aren’t athletes spraining their ankles every day.
Physical Therapy helps your body regain as much strength and function as possible. Since muscles also contribute to stability, a physical therapist will adjust the patient’s exercises to strengthen the muscles in the areas prone to injury. This type of therapy is the most beneficial and is why your podiatrist often suggests physical therapy for most types of injuries.
Basketball shoes are quite a bit different than the cross trainers or running shoes we all have stashed away in our closets. Basketball shoes or high tops come up higher to give your ankle more support. You put a lot of stress on your body jarring back and forth, running up and down the court and jumping up for the rebound. Simply changing your shoe gear can do wonders to reducing injuries on the court.
In addition, some people are more prone to ankle sprains due to biomechanical weaknesses, or simply put, the way their foot and ankle moves when they walk or run. This can innate weakness can be eliminated with a properly made custom orthotic that controls excessive foot motion.
Though the NCAA offers some of the best training and resources to their athletes, some injuries are inevitable. If you ever roll your ankle, take a stumble, or hear a POP, make sure to contact your podiatric physician as soon as possible. The earlier you seek medical attention by a highly trained doctor in the foot and ankle or a podiatrist, the better the outcome of your injury will be.
