It seems to me that everywhere you look orthotics are being sold almost anywhere these days and on every corner of the block, depending on where you live. From the trade show/plowing match trailer set up to the fitness equipment store to the health care professional who’s designation is no where close to any a foot specialist designation, orthotics seem to be a product to buy like a pair of shoes. This type of marketing stating that everyone and anyone should be wearing orthotics denotes the whole purpose of orthotics being a medical device to correct lower limb biomechanical anomalies. The question that needs to be asked is: what is the difference between picking up a pair of orthotics from a trade show versus going to a health care profession who is trained in dispensing a pair of custom made foot orthotics?

The best style of shoe to place on your feet is a shoe that has laces rather then velcro or a slip-on. Though velcro and slip-on shoes have a need and a purpose to their design of shoes especially for many people who do not have the finger dexterity for fine motor movements like tying up their shoes, laces are not as restrictive to the shoe. Shoes that have laces provide the shoe with a wide opening for your foot to slide into and allows for a degree of securing your foot within the shoe by how tight they are pulled for your comfort level. However, there are some cases where it doesn’t matter how loose you tie your shoes, you still experience pain on the top of your foot or the shoe just doesn’t seem to fit right.

The fall always brings change with it. This is not only back to school time, it is also when the fall and winter sports teams start up. Where I live, in a rural area, one of the popular sports in the area is ice hockey - along with a few others. However, I see many kids and adults getting back on the ice after their 5 month rest for the summer. Even though my daughter is not in organized sports just yet, I know when hockey season is starting because I have everyone coming in requesting a pair of orthotics to fit in their shoes as well as their hockey skates.

When some people experience pain at the ball of the foot, depending on where the pain is, it can either be sesamoiditis or metatarsalgia. Though many think they are one in the same thing. The difference between the two is the mechanism of injury and the location of the pan. For this blog, I will be focusing on sesamoiditis but to understand the difference, please read about metatarsalgia.

The 6th annual Brockton’s Buskers Festival rolls into downtown Walkerton on Saturday, Aug. 18 and this year Melissa Bendo Orthotics Inc. has been able to sponsor this extremely successful festival.

Professional buskers on the schedule for 2012 include:

With being a health care professional, I need to be aware of many types of diseases especially when they effect the lower limb. I was recently contact by the Charcot Marie Tooth Association to be added to their medical resource list for people in Midwestern Ontario who have this disease. I was contacted because of my blog on Charcot Marie Tooth (CMT) disease.

Many people come in to see me as new clients that already wear a pair orthotics. Their previous pair is from either someone out of town where they previously lived or from other health care professionals claiming to know how to assess and design a pair of orthotics.

I just came back from my Annual Pedorthic Symposium out in Whistler B.C. a couple weeks ago where new and current research was presented to us. We heard lectures on topics ranging from the use of fluoscopy while wearing an pair of orthotics in our shoes to the research being done in the Nike Lab to how to treat the diabetic foot with orthotics and shoes.

Dr. Lieberman is one of the top researches studying this barefoot running movement and how it is changing our biomechanics. His research consists of finding that humans were not designed for speed but for endurance. As the human evolved, there are signs throughout research that humans used to hunt for their food by exhausting their prey, thus hunting for food would take humans longer than running as fast as a cheetah and catching their prey quickly.

As a certifited pedorthist, I know the biomechanics of the lower limb. The way I run my clinics is that I leave the shoe fitting to the shoe fitters. There are a few really good shoe stores in Midwestern Ontario that have a vast selection of shoes that it would be silly for me to try to compete with their stature. So, I refer my clients when they need a pair of shoes to one of these various shoe stores.