Foot problems like bunions, bunion nets hammertoes overlapping toes can be unsightly,
and of course painful. In this video, I'm going to be giving you my honest physical therapist
opinion of yoga toes, there's so many other conditions that yoga toes can be helpful for
including outer foot pain, even some ankle problems can benefit from this toe device.
Now my friend here has them. And there's two versions that that we have here we
have the original yoga toes that are on this foot. And then we have the gyms yoga toes,
on this foot over here. And let me tell you about the features of yoga toes, they're made out of
this nice flexible gel. And these right here are closed. And of course, you have holes that you
can't get out of your toes are trapped in there. Whereas these are open on one end. And they're
a little easier to get on and to use. But there's different reasons why you might get
these versus these I'll tell you more in just a moment. Generally, these are advertised as
being for women because they have a gym shape, it looks like jewelry on the top.
But you know male or female I if you're just looking at improving your foot health,
I don't think you should be concerned about the way they look, you're probably not going to be
walking around in public with these on anyways, nobody will see you if your man and you're
concerned about we're in gyms and your feet. But these are a little bit more advanced and
in spreading out your toes. That's how they're advertised and marketed. But I'm
going to talk to you about some other ways to use them that can help you correct your
toe alignment and some serious foot problems that maybe you can even avoid surgery for now,
let me tell you some pros of these, the soft gel is BPA free, they come in pairs.
So my friend, here's we're in the other one of each of these. And the these the original yoga
toes, they can be used on either side of the foot, you can just turn it over and it adapts to your
left or right foot versus the gyms they are for a specific side. So this one is for the right foot,
my friends got the left side on, you can just flip it over, it's not going to work the same way
because it's curved for the shape of your foot. And, and these are smaller for your smaller toes.
And these are also latex free in case you have any allergies to latex. And I have had patients
tell me that while they're using these for their health care purposes, are also given themselves
a pedicure and doing their nails. So works very, very appropriately for that purpose too.
Now, as far as cons go, they're really for what we're going to use this for, there really aren't
many cons, you don't want to walk with these, that's the only thing that I would say is
toe separators like these, they do sell some that are just for one toe,
you would just put it between your big toe and your second toe, or another couple of toes,
and you can wear that inside your shoe. But these are not built for that. So I would
not try to walk around with these things, it's just going to be uncomfortable, it's going to make
your walking change completely not the way you should normally walk. Another con might be that,
you know, if they made a male version of the gyms, the ones that are open on top,
I think that would be beneficial for some men that are a little self conscious about using these.
But I don't think it's a deal breaker at all, I think this will work just fine for men. This
is an easier version to get into using the yoga toes. And let's talk about how to use
yoga toes. So the basic idea here is you're going to fit each of your toes and it takes
a little bit of work and getting all your toes to fit right into all the spaces here.
Now with the original yoga toes, it's a little bit harder. With these, it's a little easier,
because you can kind of just wedge these between your toes just fine. But once you have them on,
let's see what it looks like. The basic way to use these is to just put them on,
that's what the what the manufacturer tells you to do is put them on and go read a book,
kick your feet up watch television. And the idea that they're trying to
promote is that you put your toes apart, and it's getting the alignment of all your toes
improved. It's putting them apart rather than overlapping each other all bunched up together
so that you can get relief in all the joints in your feet. Now what I promote, what I tell my
patients to do with these is to do exercises while you have them on because I think it is beneficial
to have something spread your toes apart. But I think it's even more beneficial to
step further. If you work out your muscles in this position by curling your toes,
and by extending your toes, because now you're teaching your muscles to work in
a way where your toes are aligned properly. So if you have muscle imbalances that are kind of
pulling your toes over each other, or making one toe move different than the rest of them.
This helps train your toe muscles to move your toes appropriately. So I tell my patients that
have foot problems, a variety of different foot problems to get yoga toes and I'll tell them to
start with the gems version because they're just easier they're on the feet, they're not as intense
versus these are going to be they're going to compress your toes a bit more, they're going to
spread them apart slightly more as well. But this would be the advanced version
and work on curling your toes up and down at first. Then once you get comfortable with that
worker and curling your toes all the way down and holding it as hard as possible. For 10
seconds a good 10 seconds is adequate to get the muscles stronger. And then relax of course and
then you to repeat that for a certain amount of time, depending on the condition that you
have and how much strength you have to gain. Now, let me give you my honest opinion about
yoga toes. I think these are fantastic. I've been recommending them to patients for a couple
of years now, since one of my patients first told me about them, and she told me that she
was using these she brought these in, and they were actually different color than
these. And she absolutely loved them. And when I saw how she was using them,
that's when I figured out oh, do the exercise that I already had to doing in this because
it's training you to move your muscles in the right pattern, rather than continuing
to force your muscles to move in the wrong way if your joints are not moving appropriately.
So this improves the alignment tremendously. If you have a history of wearing boots, or heels,
especially high heels, and you were in shoes that kind of shove your toes to the front of the of the
shoe and bunch them together. This is especially good and make sure that you're preventing that
your toes from maintaining that posture. As you age, you want to make sure that your
toes can spread out because that's how we're designed to walk. We're designed to have toes
it can spread out and grab the ground as if you were walking barefoot out on open land,
you should be able to grab the ground on uneven terrain and keep your balance.
But if your toes are all bunched up together, then you don't have as good balance because they can't
grip effectively the way they're designed to. So this promotes more natural alignment of your toes
so that you can improve your balance for the long term. As well as make your toes look a little bit
nicer if you're worried about the way they look. Hey, if you thought this video was helpful for
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If you're interested in learning more, go check out a link to get to our playlist down in the
description as well as a link to purchase your own yoga toast from Amazon. That's down in the
description too. I wish you the best of luck and I'll see you the next video. Bye