Modify Your Shoes, Modify Your Life

Differences in the length of your lower limbs mean pain, discomfort, and a detrimental change to the way you walk and move. While some are born with a natural discrepancy in limb length, most differences are caused as we age by:

• Injury to the hips, thighs, knees, shins, ankles or feet
• Fractures and dislocations of the lower limbs
• Lower limb surgery
• Flattening of the arch in one foot
• Damage to the growth plate of growing bones in kids
• An apparent difference due to muscular contractions/irregularities

When one foot is shorter than the other, the longer foot will constantly bend at the knee to try to balance the sides, your hips will usually be out of alignment (which means your back will too!), you’ll be loading more pressure onto one leg, and much more. These compensations individually are more than enough to cause significant pain, make walking difficult, lead to further damage, and generally cause you a lot of hassle!

Shoe Modifications

One way that we can effectively manage a limb length discrepancy is by modifying your footwear. Simply put, we ‘build’ up the base of the shoe to the precise height needed to bring your hips and lower limbs level and moving well. We also place rocker or tipping points in precise areas to help patients walk more freely.

Here’s a fantastic example of a post-surgical leg length difference – you can see the significant difference from the textbooks place under that right heel! And then the final result – a seamless looking shoe that is working to help keep the patient stable, comfortable, and keeping pain and controllable complications to a minimum!

Here at Masterton Foot Clinic, we’ve been developing and harnessing our experience in the rehabilitation field over the last 20 years. We work closely with our local orthopaedic surgeon and specialist physiotherapists to help re-align many patients like these, enabling them to lead lives with less pain and more mobility!

If you’re worried that you or someone in your family may have a difference in limb length following an injury, surgery or from their childhood years – bring them in for a check! It can save a lot of hassle and pains for the years to come.

We are ACC registered and hold an ACC contract which means that shoe modification can be covered by ACC if you meet the eligibility requirements. To book in, or for any questions, give us a call on 06 370 4057 or book online here.

Note: Patient has consented in full to these images being used by Masterton Foot Clinic.