serenemaklong.blogspot.com
By Dr
George Lebeau
One afternoon at a youth football game, a mother asked if I would look at her son’s feet.
Apparently, he kept spraining his ankles and his feet hurt all the time. When I checked, I noticed that both his feet and ankles were swollen and very painful when touched.
It was odd for both feet to be like this so I asked her to show me his running shoes. She brought me a pair of football cleats that were about as useless as running with plastic bottles on your feet. The so-called “cleats” were less than five mm high and rounded, so they provided no running traction at all.
In addition, the shoes were already worn out with no lateral support and they were at least two sizes too large. When she bought the shoes, the salesman had assured her that these were the “latest and greatest” shoes in the market. Nonsense, they were terrible!
Why were the shoes so big for his feet? She told me that her husband wanted to buy them large enough that his feet would “grow into” them over the next year or so. I told her she should fit the shoes to his feet for each season. Some boys in the 12- to 16-year-old range grow so fast they may need two pair of shoes in the same season.
Don’t skimp on proper footwear
One word of caution about inadequate cleat size. These can give a young athlete a false sense of security while running and making quick lateral movements. If the cleats don’t dig into the ground properly, that can cause serious injury to the ankles and feet.
At each shoe outlet, I asked the sales representative to bring me several pairs of the most popular brands. I didn’t sort through many boxes of shoes trying to find problem shoes. As a matter of fact I spent two days searching for one good pair of shoes I could show as “normal” but after looking at well over 40 pair of shoes I was not successful!
Cleats for kids
When you go to the shoe store, the first thing to do is ask the sales person to bring you three pairs of the same shoe. Find a nice flat counter space and line each pair of shoes side by side. Stand back away from the shoes and look at them.
There’s a chance the right shoe is slightly higher than the left. This may be a little difficult to see at first but when you see this up close at the store it will jump out at you. Also notice how the left shoe tilts outward slightly.
The problem here is that over the course of an entire season, as these shoes become worn out, the young athlete wearing this pair will develop foot, ankle, knee and back pain because the shoes are throwing the entire lower half of the body out of alignment, (one side is higher than the other and one shoe turns outward).
If the right shoe is significantly higher than the left, over a period of time they will cause the wearer to lean to the left because the high right shoe will push the spine to the left.
Athletic running or sport shoes
If the left shoe is quite (or significantly) a bit taller than the right shoe and this same shoe also tilts inward significantly, this height difference and inward tilt will cause ankle pain and potentially a bad sprain. Another thing I want you to take notice of is how much higher off the table the left heel is compared with the right. This shoe is a disaster waiting to happen. The person who wears these shoes is going to have some serious foot and ankle pain.
If the shoes are just the opposite — right is quite a bit taller than the left and the left one tilts outward, running or doing any fast action sports with this pair of shoes will cause severe left lateral pressure to the body and result in ankle sprain.
Since almost everyone has one foot slightly longer than the other, what would happen if you wear the short shoe on the long foot? This person will have pain in the toes and ball of the foot because the shoe is pushing the toes backward. If you have the short foot in the long shoe there will be too much room for the toes causing slipping of the foot that may result in plantar fasciitis and heel pain.
It’s all in the shoes
We depend on our shoes to provide comfort, support and stability during our everyday activities. What happens when the very things we depend on become the problem? It is time to be proactive and correct this problem before you purchase the shoes.
How to do this? I have been checking shoes for over 30 years and I am sorry to say that the problem is not getting any better. Well over 50 per cent of the shoes I check are defective in some way. In most cases, the only “quality control” I have been able to find is a person at the end of an assembly line who makes sure there is one right and one left shoe in each box.
Remember when I said to ask the sales person for three pairs of the same shoe? This is what I want you to do next time you buy athletic shoes. Say for an example during your buy, you notice the right shoe is badly tilted and higher than the left — the left shoe looks pretty good with no tilt so the next step is to take another right shoe from one of the other boxes and try to match the “good” left shoe.
Ready for more bad news?
Orthotics will NOT help. If anything, trying to have orthotics made to correct this problem only makes it worse. You cannot start with a crooked foundation and make it better by adding a more complicated structure. For orthotics to work, you have to start with a stable foundation.
Whenever I have an athlete come to me for treatment I automatically ask them to bring all their running shoes with them on their next treatment visit. When they do, I examine each pair of shoes for defects and teach the person how to shop for shoes that will not harm their feet.
The process I want you to follow
1. Bring a small ruler or long pencil with you to the shoe store.
2. Once you have the shoes side-by-side, place the pencil across the top of the shoes and see if there is a downward tilt on one side. If it does, that means one shoe is lower than the other and not a good pair.
3. Place the pencil at a right angle to the counter along the back of the shoe. With the pencil straight, look to see if the shoe is tilted to one side or the other. If there is a tilt the shoe is crooked and not good.
4. Look at the shoes from the top and see if they are the same length.
5. If one is longer than the other, these are two different shoes!
Two more things before I finish:
First, the price of the shoes has nothing to do with the quality of the construction. I was at a high end shoe store and saw running shoes that were badly tilted and crooked. The price was RM1,500. I have also found very well made running shoes at the discount outlet stores for RM50.
Women will always ask me if there are problems with dress shoes or high-heels.
I am happy to tell you that in well over 90 per cent of cases there are no problems at all with this type of shoe because there is actually more quality control associated with dress shoes.
(Dr Lebeau is an associate professor, chiropractor at International Medical University)
No comments:
Post a Comment