Your Feet Take Care of You From The Ground Up
On your next visit in our office, kick off your shoes. Our chiropractors are going to work on your feet as well as your back.
Your feet work harder than you do, and with 26 bones in each foot, they are engineered extremely well for walking and running. You usually do this without having to think much about it, walking around San Francisco on your commute to work, or jogging casually along the Embarcadero. However, when things are off kilter in your hips, for example, you can have have back pain, neck strain, and shoulder tension the secret solution may just rely on having your feet corrected by a Chiropractor.
Your feet influence your spine from the ground up. With every step, as you plant your heel to the ground, and you roll forward, your arch has to collapse to absorb energy. Then, when you toe off to push yourself forward, your arch has to go rigid. This transmits forces back into your feet and toes for efficient movement. When things are off in your feet they can cause your posture to compensate for the injury. In turn this leads to a cascading effect across your body. That being said, there are three major benefits to having your feet and ankles adjusted:
- Injury Reduction
- Awareness & Preventative Care
- Living Pain Free
Injury Reduction
The first benefit is one that I discovered firsthand by working as the team chiropractor for several sports teams: Reduction of Injuries. Several years ago I was the chiropractor for a high school football team: the Highland High School Rams in Salt Lake City. Every Saturday morning I would bring my chiropractic table and set up in their training room. I would adjust each player’s foot and ankle when it indicated that they needed work. They loved the relief they felt. Yet, the biggest benefit we found was that the team had an 80% reduction of non-contact injuries that season. I then went on to work on a high school basketball team, a college track and field team, and finally the Berkeley Men’s Lacrosse team for a season, with similar success.
Awareness & Preventative Care
The second best thing about foot and ankle adjusting is understanding and awareness. Foot and ankle adjustments help improve proprioception. You’ll have a better awareness of where you are stepping and balancing. You’ll be grounded, and you’ll have a better sense of symmetry and balance. Having a chiropractic doctor explain the motions and activities that are causing injuries in other parts of your body. They can trace that movement down to your feet and make you more conscious of your body’s ergonomics. Knowing this can help you prevent injuries in the future, and an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Living Pain Free
Finally, the most wonderful benefit of foot and ankle health: Living pain free. When your feet and ankles are well adjusted the forces transmitted to your knees and low back are more in line with what your body is naturally designed to do. There’s no funny twist in your knee to compensate for a rigid instep, for example. I often see chronic motions where the heel bone moves in a rolled-in pattern. Using chiropractic care those patterns are improved, allowing your foot to point straight ahead. Consequently, this puts less pressure on your pelvis at the (Sacroiliac) SI joints.
When things are aligned and you’re moving more naturally the muscles, joints, and bones work in harmony. Subsequently, this allows them to deliver the right amount of pressure to the right areas. When all the gears in the engine are greased and functioning well the entire motor runs efficiently.
These benefits are all there assuming that you will be one of the many people who develop a pattern of asymmetry in your feet and legs. If you qualify to have your lower extremities worked on based on your specific injuries, then you too will enjoy the benefits of having your feet adjusted.
If that sounds like you, then go ahead and kick your shoes off, and lets take a look!
Dr. Ryan Todd Lloyd, DC
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