Pronatos treats
PROBLEMS TREATED WITH PRONATOS
Problems treated with PRONATOS are injuries to the feet, knees, and hips. A foot with a trampled foot arch affects the step not to spring back and develop force in action. It is an essential function for not least athletes to be the difference between succeeding or not in their sport.
It is not uncommon to have one-sided pronation that affects the running step that slowly wears on the body with injuries. Look at the wear on the shoe’s sole. Is it more on the outside of one shoe? Also, look inside the shoe, is it worn inside the heel cap and worn inside above the big toe? The foot does not work as it should.
The loss of power affects the whole body’s biomechanics, which will sooner or later cause injuries that must be treated. A trampled foot arch causes pain in the feet and lower legs, such as heel spurs, plantar fasciitis, osteomyelitis, running knees, Tibialis posterior syndrome, Compartment syndrome, Peroneus syndrome, health problems, and various forms of knee pain, often challenging to diagnose.
We also treat Hammertoe and Hallux Valgus, and these problems are compensatory for the malfunction. The hammer toe comes from the fact that the big toe does not bend in the walking phase, and then the load ends up on the other toe, which becomes overloaded. Hallux Valgus comes from walking “around” our big toe and pushing it outwards because we pull the heel inwards to avoid going over it.
Many surgeons say that the other toe is too long and therefore you get problems, and they want to shorten it. It’s is not possible because you have always had the same length on your toe and have not had issues before.
THE COMPENSATIONS CONTINUE UPWARD
Constant discomfort from the trampled foot arch is also hip discomfort with Trochanteritis in the hip, and pelvic pain with skew, compensated up in the back.
With increasing age, you often get a trampled foot arch due to overexertion or that you have been lying in bed for a long time. The calf muscles get stiff, which later leads to not lifting the foot when walking. In order not to hit the foot in the street during a walk, you turn the foot outwards (obliquely worn heels). This leads to stepping with an inward rotation of the heel over the big toe and developing Hallux Valgus.
When it has gone so far, you often already have more problems than just Hallux Valgus, but you also have pain of various kinds in the foot with low balance and strength. You usually wake up with pain the first steps in the morning. It shows that there is a fault that irritates the structures even at rest. It will not heal before it is corrected.
The morning pain only subsides after treatment with PRONATOS because what has irritated the foot structures has been corrected. If the healing does not continue, you must examine which structures are still in pain. If pain consists, there may be other inflammatory processes such as bursitis, nerve entrapment (Morton’s neuroma), inflamed tendon sheaths in the foot/ankle (Tendosynovitis). Or the muscles have not been able to regain their function to be able to work normally yet. In these cases, exercises need to stimulate the muscles to start functioning normally again
Trying to correct the errors with insoles means, in the worst case, that you prevent it from healing on its own. Molded soles keep the foot at the fault you have and are difficult to heal.
It feels better with the soles because the weak muscles that do not work are supported, and the pressure below changes against the sole.
If you are not well or better from your treatment problems, there are probably other causes for the problem than trampled foot arch, or the trampled foot arch is due to other underlying diseases.
PRONATOS WITH STRETCHPOWER
A trampled foot arch can cause these pain conditions:
Pain around the hip, Sciatica, Trochanteritis, Scoliosis, leg length differences, groin pain, rupture of the posterior thigh muscles, tightness in the IT band, “running knee” / “jumping knee,” Schlatter knee, knee osteoarthritis, osteomyelitis, heel inflammation, recurrent ankle sprains feet, high/low arches, overpronation, Plantar Fasciitis, Heel spur, Hallux valgus, Hammertoe, Morton’s neuroma.
With StretchPower, we perform PRONATOS, a new form of therapy that corrects feet. The treatment will regain foot function, which has become incorrect due to overload.
The overload has caused Functional Hallux Limitus and Equinus.
WHAT HAPPENS TO OUR FEET?
With age, the arches of the foot drop down, the foot becomes wider, and the shoes begin to feel cramped and uncomfortable. Why? Well, it’s a natural progression from less exercise and overload. The foot needs to be trained, but it can also collapse from overload.
Just overloading can cause the big toe not to come up under load and give Functional Hallux Limitus, which worsens to the next stage, which is Hallux Rigidus and then Hallux Valgus. It may be enough to carry something heavy for the foot to be overloaded and the arch of the foot to sink a little. Other reasons can be that you get back pain or just a sore back so that there is nerve irritation down the leg and the muscles weaken.
Tight shoes negatively affect the foot; with the toes not having enough space, the foot begins to collapse from lack of mobility and not having room to support the foot properly. The foot is being turned outwards due to the stiff big toe joint, we walk at an oblique angle over the arch, and the arch of the foot collapses. The big toe is pushed towards the next toe as you walk with an inward rotation of the heel, and you have got Hallux Valgus
How do we walk ?
Children and their walking style.
Functional Hallux Limitus that prevents the movement of the big toe can come at a very early age.
There are examples of babies taking their first steps with a big toe that does not move as it should. Then they must compensate for the step by turning the leg inward or outward. This compensation leads children to the fact that the lower leg becomes twisted and stuck in an inward-twisted position. This twist is split at night if it does not return to a straight position—unfortunately, completely unnecessary suffering for the child who could easily have been treated in time.
One often sees children compensating for their gait, where they walk over an inwardly rotated foot and load the outside of the foot incorrectly. You can also compensate by turning your foot outwards. These conditions are treatable and give a quick result on how the child walks.
Functional Hallux Limitus is a condition that we compensate for when walking.
There are other reasons why we compensate for our steps, such as being stiff in the ankles or weak in the muscles of our feet.
The compensations wander upwards and give us problems with the knees, hips, back and neck. With a stiff big toe, we are forced to rotate on the foot to get the big toe “out of the way”, and then we pull the heel in for the toe to come outward to avoid getting straight over it. Then we walk inside the toe (medial side) or the side towards the body’s midline. This way of walking pushes the toe outwards at the risk of Hallux Valgus. You get calluses on that side of the big toe. This way of walking causes the pant legs to be splashed down on the inside when we go outside in wet weather, as the heel “waves” inwards at the rear position of the step.
Turning out the foot gives increased pressure on the arch of the foot that does not receive support from the windlass system (the winch that we have in the arch of the foot), and it stresses conditions such as Plantar fascitis and Heel Spur. This compensation causes the Tibilais Posterior muscle to tire out and the support of the foot arch to decrease further.
Before this compensatory outward twist at the end of the walking cycle, one often walks on the outside of the foot so that one balances almost on the outer edge of the foot. This pressure on this weaker part of the foot produces conditions such as tailor’s knot, where the little toe’s joint is stressed and thickened. It also stresses the foot to a symptom called Morton’s Neuroma, where the nerve between the 3rd and 4th toes becomes irritated with tingling, radiation or numbness.
All these compensations need to be worked off by deliberately going right. After the treatment, you get points of reference that you should think about to get away from a long-term compensated way of walking.
THESE INCONVENIENCES ARE CORRECTED WITH STRETCHPOWER and PRONATOS
- Morton’s Neuroma comes from being unable to step over the big toe and thus overloading the outer part of the foot.
- Plantar fasciitis / Heel spurs come from the big toe not coming up and thus not the arch of the foot either, and this pulls abnormally in the plantar fascia with each step you take, and the muscles try to compensate and get overloaded.
- Hallux Valgus/ Hallux Rigidus is because the big toe does not come up when walking. It starts with Functional Hallux Limitus, which we can effectively treat; if it is allowed to continue, it becomes a more complex condition to treat with Hallux Valgus, where the toe begins to pull outward towards the other toe or Hallux Rigidus, where the big toe’s joint (MTP1) begins to be stressed and arthrosified. But we can still eliminate the root cause and improve the condition.
- Calf tear comes from the big toe not coming up, and you stress the calf unevenly when running. Often, the big toe muscle is torn by the toe not bending, which is difficult to differentiate from.
- Achilles tendinopathy / Achilles tendonitis comes from the fact that the two muscles of the calf (Soleus muscle / Gastrocnemius muscle ) pull differently in the Achilles tendon. There is an imbalance inside the tendon that attaches to the heel bone. The tendon twists in rotation with the two muscle attachments, which makes it difficult to equalize the stress inside the tendon from the two muscles. With StretchPower, you get an immediate effect on the imbalance, and you feel how the pain subsides during the treatment.
- Nocturnal cramps, and swollen calves, come from the muscles being unable to relax due to the wrong loads.
- Knee and hip problems come from having to twist the foot in the step, and the arch does not come up, which gives an outward rotation of the foot and an inward valgus of the knee. The hip joint must rotate in each step which wears out the joint prematurely.
- Back pain comes from the arches of the foot collapsing and producing different lengths of legs and twists that compensate upwards to the pelvis and back.
- Tibialis Posterior Tendinitis and Peroneus tendinitis, inflammations of the tendon sheaths around the ankles, come from Hallux Limitus (stiff big toe). When the big toe’s lift to the foot arch falls away, the Tibialis Posterior muscle and tendon are slowly but surely overloaded and, in the worst case, damaged.
RELATIONSHIP WITH FOOT-KNEE-HIP-BACK-SHOULDERS-NECK-HEAD-JAW JOINT
There are countless examples of how a trampled foot arch affects the body in a chain. Easily explained, you can see the impact on the knee and hip by just rotating your lower leg inwards. The knee is shifted towards the middle, which strains the inner ligament in the knee. The rotation up in the hip is affected because it is not in the optimal position for the muscles that attach to the femur, which are weakened.
The trampled arch of the foot makes the leg shorter, with the pelvis lying obliquely with that side lower. Since the pelvis is the base of the back, it tilts, and you get scoliosis in the back that continues up to the neck, where the head is balanced obliquely with muscle tension..
SHOULD YOU WEAR AN INSOLE IN YOUR SHOES?
If you have insoles in the shoes, you should not use these after the Pronatos treatment, as the shape and function of the foot change. The soles made after a misaligned foot will not fit and should not be used.
Old shoes can also be deformed after the foot, forcing the foot wrong again. It can be seen that the above material of shoes (leather or fabric) is stretched. They should then not be used.
The most important feature of the foot is that the toes can extend/get up in the propulsion phase. This feature lifts the arch and gives the foot stability. The only thing that lifts the arch of the foot is this function. It is also the most common dysfunction patients have related to their problems.
Below is a film of a patient treated for this condition, and we test how his old arch inserts affected his foot.
We can see that the pressure the insert makes on the arch stops the ability of the toe to function normally. Instead of supporting the foot, it removes its ability to become stable.