Flat feet is one of those problems that most healthcare providers just don't know what to
do about except offer stretches and insoles for your shoes. Most people just learn to live with
flat feet and avoid doing things that cause pain. In this video, I'm going to answer the question
can flat feet really be cured. And we'll also explain everything you need to know
about treating your flat feet. I'll also explain everything you need to know to begin to fix your
flat feet. Let's answer the question What are flat feet? Well, there's two types of flat feet.
The first is a functional flat foot, that's the most common type. And then the second is
a structural flat foot. Now there's more divisions in that depending on
your age and other factors. But just for the purposes of this video, you need to be aware
of a structural flat foot and a functional flat foot flat feet are also known as fallen arches.
So just in case, you are confusing the two terms, it's the exact same thing
that this is a functional flat foot right here. And you can see there's an arch right
there. In a structural flat foot, it looks like there's always a flat foot,
even when your foots in the air like this, it stays flat. In a functional flat foot
like this one, the arch does come up when you take pressure off the foot.
But when you put pressure onto the foot, the arch then goes down, it collapses.
Now, the bones in the foot right here that create the arch need to be flexible so that
your foot can interact with the ground. But then when you're going to press off your foot to move
on to the next thing, then that those bones need a lock together in place and create an arch.
And that's from the muscles and muscles that come in here and help to flex the toes, they help to
lock in the arch of the foot right here to create a little bit of an arch. So if you have a fallen
arch or a flat foot, your foot does that, and it's a functional flat foot, then that means that the
muscles in the area are weak and they're not able to create an arch for you are flat feet genetic.
Absolutely yes, if your mom or dad had this, or if your grandparents have had flat feet,
then it's likely that you're going to get the same genes from them the same type of feet. And
so your foots ability to maintain an arch might be affected if they had the same problem to now
if you had a structural flat foot the rest of the family, then that's a different situation.
Remember, the information in this video is not going to directly apply to you. That's
a whole different situation, our flat feet painful. Having flat feet can directly cause
pain in your feet and ankles. But most of the time, it doesn't cause pain right away,
it tends to cause pain higher up in the knees, the hips and even into the lower back.
This is why you sometimes hear healthcare professionals recommend to their patients
with knee, hip and back problems to get new shoes because usually the cushion in their shoes that
have been helping to support the arch has worn out if you've had the shoes for six months or more,
that's the guideline with that, then getting new shoes restores a little bit of an arch
support in from your shoe on your foot. And so it better aligns your knees,
hips and reduces the compressive forces going through your lower back. And although it's
less common to have foot and ankle pain directly from a flat foot, it does happen. We see it here
in the clinic all the time. And most of the time, it's very fixable as long as it hasn't
been there for too long. And there aren't any arthritic changes that are more permanent. And
what are the common treatments for flat feet? Well, the first thing that people often do is
put ice and heat on their foot just to get some short-term relief. It's very common for healthcare
professionals to recommend to patients to freeze a water bottle in your freezer,
of course, and then rollover it after it's frozen, because you can kind of massage and
put cold onto your foot at the same time. People often get pain relief, if they're
having pain directly in their foot from that, if it's bad enough, some people will take over
the counter pain medications. And if you end up going to the doctor because the pain
is bad enough and not able to be treated well with over the counter medications,
your doctor might recommend prescription medications that you can take by mouth.
And if that doesn't help, they can do cortisone pain injections into your foot to get some more
localized relief, some relief directly in the arch of the foot or wherever you're having your
pain and your foot and ankle. Of course, all of these options are just short term pain relievers.
They're not fixing the root of the problem, but that might be what's necessary for you in order to
get up and do normal daily things that some people will also find relief from over the counter art
supports or they'll get custom made art supports. When I'm talking about art supports. I'm talking
about what you would put on the inside of a shoe. This is my favorite brand of shoe. It's called
olukai. They sent me this pair of shoes I'm so excited about it. And I like this brand
specifically because they have an insole that it comes with that has a natural art
support right here. And so it's it it's rigid. It's not super soft, it has some give to it,
but it just gives you that nice little support. And you could buy these over the counter to you
can buy them at your drugstores at have at most big shopping stores like Walmart, CVS,
grocery stores that have a pharmacy section will typically have something like this. And
you can replace the insole that's in your shoe with something like this.
Or if you go to a specialist, like a foot doctor or an orthotist, somebody who makes these custom,
they'll mold your foot and build you a custom one, depending on what your foot
needs. There's a lot of debate on whether a over the counter one like this one is
better or worse than a custom built one. And the research is showing that they're about the same.
In my personal experience, I found that if you have a structural foot problem, you should
probably go get some custom orthotics may which is going to cost more money, of course. But you're
you don't have as much of an ability to create an arch. Because if you do have a functional flat
foot, then there's things you could do to modify it. And an over the counter support like this
one might be enough to get you by while you're getting stronger and fixing your own flat foot.
Now other treatments are to be sent to physical therapy to do stretches and exercises, they may
or may not recommend something like this as well. And in extreme cases, surgery is an option. For
flat feet, there's three most common procedures that are done for flat feet, the first one being
a foot reconstruction surgery. And in this procedure, they'll transfer tendons possibly
cut bone in your foot to recreate an arch. Usually, they're putting in metal screws and
plates. To do this, then a foot joint fusion or an another one is something that's also done.
And that's where they lock the joints into position, usually with plates and screws in
order to not allow that arch to collapse at all. And another surgical option is a
wedge osteotomy where they're cutting a wedge shaped space a gap in the bone of your foot.
And then they're using metal plates and screws to kind of hold it open and then filling it
with bone from somewhere else in your body to have to go harvest that so that they can shape
the bone a little bit different. But this helps to keep the joint mobility in your
foot so that you can better use your foot. Now these surgical procedures are going
to be absolutely right for certain people in specific situations. But you have to take into
consideration that it's usually a compromise or a trade off. If you're going to go have a surgery
for a foot problem of a flat foot problem, then you're going to be losing some muscle function
especially they reposition a tendon, you might change the shape of a bone in your foot, you might
lose the joint motion in your foot as well. And losing those things have long term
implications for you, you might permanently not be able to use your foot the right way.
And although it may give you some pain relief, and may not allow you to do other things that
you want to be able to do like walk as long as you want be on your feet for as long as you want.
Or even do more extreme activities that you particularly enjoy like hiking or running doing
any sort of resistance exercise or putting weight on your feet is always a concern because it's in
the back of people's heads of is my plate and my foot going to support that am I going to mess up
the screws my foot my going to undo the surgery and have to go back in for another surgery.
So I strongly encourage you to treat the root of the problem naturally first before resorting
to surgery, having that conversation with the surgery because they're likely going to tell you
the surgical options and push you towards surgery if you're a good candidate for it. And sometimes
I think they overstretch a bit what's possible because they don't always see that the surgeons
don't always see the possibility of improving naturally because that's just not their specialty.
Now I'm going to talk about the root of the problem and how to fix flat feet naturally in
just a moment. But first let's talk about what happens if you don't fix your flat feet. Well
directly in the foot and ankle you can run into arthritis, binding problems, bone spur problems,
plantar fasciitis, tendinitis and bursitis in your feet and ankles can consistently happen in your
feet, especially if you just do a little too much a little bit more than what your muscles joints
and bones in your feet and ankles can tolerate. That's what sets off some sort of itis somewhere
in your foot. And when I say itis I mean inflammation, it could be
bursitis. That just means inflammation of the bursa tendinitis inflammation of the
tendon. Arthritis is inflammation of the joints. And if your arch remains fallen,
it's going to affect the knee because it needs going to want to collapse inward. So that
messes up the knee joint mechanics which leads to arthritis problems in the knee in the long term.
In the short term, it's possible to get meniscus injuries, knee bursitis knee
tendinitis you can also get ligament problems like MCL tears, ACL tears,
and you can also damage the cartilage behind the kneecap more so as a result of having a fallen
arch. One more joint up higher in the hip. When that ankle falls down because the arch is fallen.
It sets up the hip to be in a different position than it's supposed to be in the ball and socket
joint. So that increases the possibility of developing hip arthritis hip labrum tears bursitis
and tendinitis in the hip. And if your hip and knee aren't moving, well then it's only going to
cause problems even further up into the low back you can get back arthritis stenosis problem limbs,
herniated disc problems in the back as well. Now let's get straight on what a cure means.
Because if you mean by cure that you never ever have a flat foot again,
then there's only one solution and that's surgical fixation of your arch. But we already
talked about the trade off that comes with that you might lose muscle function, tendon function,
the joints might be locked, you're not going to operate normally in your foot,
you're not going to have a normal foot again. Now, visually, your arts might be there,
it may look better, but you can't get back to walking as long as you want hiking, exercising,
running, doing any of those things are going to be very questionable moving forward if you
have a surgery like that. So yeah, your arch was cured. But what did you lose.
But if you take a cure to instead mean, healing naturally by getting the right muscles stronger,
using certain things like maybe an orthotic and insole, to assist you, and getting to the point
to where you can walk as long as you want, you can run as much as you would like, you can hike,
you're not really limited in any activities. But you have to maintain your strength you there
may be a few things that you do, or things that you modify, in order to be able to sustain doing
things as long as you want. That, to me is definitely more of a cure. Because if you
can preserve the way that your foot is supposed to work, even though it's not a perfect arch,
or it doesn't look ideal, but you feel great and you can do what you want.
I would prefer that situation personally and all the patients I've talked to are usually on the
same page with me. The main thing to remember is that you've got to maintain strength and
certain foot muscles for the long term in order to have no problems from flat feet.
In other words, it's a maintenance thing, you have to continue to exercise just like teeth,
you don't brush your teeth once and never expect to have a cavity again,
you have to brush your teeth every day multiple times a day flossing,
there's consistent maintenance that you need to keep up in order to keep your
teeth healthy for the long term. In the case of flat feet functional flat feet.
The number one problem is that the toe-curling muscles and muscles that help you to curl your
toes are too weak. And it's those muscles that help you to generate an arch. If you
just take off your shoe right now and curl your toes your arch begins to climb
up if you have a flat, functional flat foot. And then there's another muscle called the
posterior tibialis muscle and there's certain ways to exercise that muscle to you can up the strength
in those muscle groups and maintain it for the long term and use it in your everyday activities.
You should be very healthy moving forward. Hey, I hope this video was helpful for you
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