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Osteopaths Are Interested In Your Footwear

Osteopathic care is not limited to your musculoskeletal wellbeing merely from a treatment point of view. Instead, many a doctor of osteopathy (D.O.) is also actively involved in helping your to maintain and attain a healthier state of being. There are several ways that this may be achieved, but one of the most startling revelations in this field rests on the fact that osteopaths are interested in your footwear!

You most likely have visited your D.O. with complaints about pain in the back, in your legs; maybe you even find that you are having a hard time maintaining a healthy posture. In this case your osteopath might ask you to take off your shoes and walk through the office and perform some very simple movements. The goal is to see you walking without your shoes on. This will tip off the D.O. if the problem of the gait the practitioner may have noticed initially is not repeated sans footwear.

The following tips are usually the ones advocated by the majority of osteopathic practitioners:

* Avoid high heels. High heels make walking a chore, they are dangerous on certain surfaces and thus lead to sprains and even broken ankles, and they contribute to the unsteady gait that may lead to a less than healthy posture.

* Good heel height is that of low to medium height.

* The sole of your shoes should be crafted from a cushioning material. Most women's shoes are devoid of the cushioning offered by men's soles. The latter are usually manufactured from rubber or at least softer plastics. Women's shoes, on the other hand, have a very thin sole that is usually made from hard plastic. This leads to serious problems for the ankles but even more so for the knees.

* Another problem that mostly women face are the shoes which are closed at the toes -- good thing that protects the feet - but pointed, which is entirely opposite to the actual makeup of the human foot. This of course may have the unintended consequences of ingrown toenails, but it also affects the cases of osteoarthritis. While fashion conscious women find it hard to let go of high heels and even seek to make deals with respect to only wearing such footwear sparingly, there is a clear and present danger for the patient who refuses to follow the D.O.'s advice to the letter.

Sometimes an osteopathic practitioner will refer the patient to a podiatrist if she or he feels that the damage to the foot and its anatomy is so significant that a specialist needs to evaluate it prior to there being any work done on it. When those two specialists work together, as doctors firmly believing in the whole body approach are often in favor of doing, the patient wins. There is a good chance that some problems can be cured with musculoskeletal manipulation at the hands of the osteopathic practitioner, and a set of high quality shock absorbing insoles crafted by a podiatrist.