Orthotics/Biomechanics
Your feet have direct impact on the rest of your body. A small abnormality in foot function can have a large impact on joints higher up in the body, causing pain and discomfort to your knees, hips and lower back.
Did you know?
- When you are running, the pressure on your feet can be three or four times your body weight. Even walking can produce more pressure than the sum of your body weight.
- The average person takes 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day? That adds up to about 115,000 miles in a lifetime or more than four times around the world. That is a lot of walking with ill-fitting shoes or painful feet!!
- In some cases foot ailments can be an early signal of more serious medical problems like arthritis or diabetes.
- Women have four times as many foot problems as men because they have a long history of wearing high heels and/or pointy toed shoes. What we do for fashion!
What are orthotics?
Orthotics are custom-made orthopaedic devices that fit comfortably inside your shoes. By balancing and buffering the forces exerted during walking and exercising, orthotics help to restore normal balance and pressure on your muscles and joints.
It is likely that you need orthotics if:
- You have sore feet on a regular basis e.g. Plantar Fasciitis
- If you have pain in your knees or Achilles tendon
- If you spend a good portion of your day standing or walking
- You play sport regularly, especially running sports
- Standing, walking or running gives you joint pain
- You have visible foot problems (bunions, fallen arches, corns)
- One of your legs is shorter than the other
- You have knock-knees or bow legs
- Your shoes wear out quickly or unevenly
- Your feet “toe out” when you walk
How do we know if you need orthotics?
Your foot is in contact with the ground for about 0.8 of a second when walking and about 0.25 seconds when running. No practitioner (no matter how well trained) can provide a 100% accurate analysis of foot function with the naked eye in a quarter of a second! So we combine our detailed chartered physiotherapy biomechanic assessment with our computerised Gait Scan.
The gait scan itself involves thousands of tiny sensors which capture the distribution of pressure throughout the sole of your foot each step you take. We can then display foot pressure distribution on the screen giving a very accurate visual representation of the pressures under your feet. We can therefore be very confident that we know what may be wrong.
Expected Costs
| Orthotic assessment | €75 (45 minutes) |
| Custom orthotic full-length | €230-€290 (depending on materials used) |
| Orthotic fitting | €25 (15 minutes) |
We know that orthotics are not cheap, so we will never prescribe them unless absolutely necessary. If appropriate we may recommend temporary orthotics (€60-€65).
Where is this service available?
We offer custom orthotics at the following clinics:
For more information on Biomechanics, click here.
Can we help you? Please click here for an appointment
