How Do Orthotics Work?

Custom foot orthotics are specially-­made devices that fit inside most shoes. They match the contours of your feet precisely, and are designed for the way you move.

Orthotics can help anyone with discomfort relating to walking, or imbalances in the body that are known to cause related pain. A tremendous benefit of custom orthotics is that they can be worn on a daily basis and utilized during most activities.

Custom orthotics can be prescribed by your chiropractor, and last well over a year in most cases. While over-the-­counter shoe inserts are available at most drugstores, they lack the custom-built precision of a prescription orthotic. These ‘one­-size-­fits­-all’ inserts rarely match your feet well, or provide the customized support you need.

What if you were told that the foundation of your home was cracking and you had two options: to put duct tape over the crack and hope for the best or spend more money upfront to totally fix the problem, which would you choose? Hopefully you would realize the importance of fixing the problem entirely, despite the cost, because it literally is holding up the rest of your house. Well, the feet are the foundation of your body, and much like foundations of homes, your feet can be fussy.

When getting assessed for custom orthotics a scan of the feet is used to learn about each foot independently and collectively. These scans can highlight any differences between your feet like one being smaller, wider, or flatter than the other. This information is essential to creating orthotics and helps achieve a result that over-the-counter orthotics simply cannot provide since both insoles in a package are the same, despite your two feet likely being different. So, although non-custom orthotics may be less expensive, they are essentially like putting duct tape on your foundation and may not resolve the issue and/or cause more problems and greater costs in the future. Making the investment of custom orthotics, however, can help you find relief and avoid unnecessary spending and frustration.