the foot? Is it coming from the ankle? Once we discover where it’s coming from that will change the treatment plan.

Say for example, we need to get the knee to point out wards and the space to open, we’ll put something underneath the foot that tilts the foot to get the knee to externally rotate again, because normally with the feet straight we want the knees to point at eleven and one o’clock.

The perfect position of the knees is eleven and one o’clock, we don’t want straight ahead knees either, we also don’t want the knees to point to ten and two o’clock or nine and three o’clock, we just want eleven and one o’ clock with the feet straight.

The reason for that is when the feet are straight and the ankles are straight, the hips are set wider, so the knee does have to get 50% of a different angle from the ankle to the hip ratio, so eleven and one o’clock is perfect alignment.

We also have to look at leg length because ‘leg length discrepancy’ is normal with growing children. When one leg grows longer than the other the pelvis will tilt, and one knee will point to a different direction compared to the other.

We have to understand that’s normal for children, but if you notice your child has knees that are leaning in or bending in it’s very important to take them to the podiatrist, or the orthopaedic, of course your general practitioner, or your paediatrician just to get a full scope of assessment done.

But most commonly we use something underneath the feet to tilt the feet to get the knees to change direction which is why if your child has ‘Gene Valgum’ or ‘Genuverous’ you’ll be asked to come and see a podiatrist to get the foot and ankle sorted to help with that.

So, what we do with Gene Valgum is we would put something underneath the foot, and we would tilt the foot (and that’s what this tilt is). Depending on the severity of the Gene Valgum, it depends on how high this wedge is so it can be anything from five degrees up to forty-five degrees in the most severe cases.

Again, say for example it’s a child, we would put a tilted orthotic with how many degrees (this child has a twenty-seven-degree tilt on to theirs) for their Gene Valgum inside school shoes and it fits easily inside the school shoe, of course we always like it with a strap on the top. For boy’s school shoes’ most of the time it’s very easy because they look like sports shoes.

Going back to Gene Valgum, normally if the ankle leans in you can imagine the leg will come up like this and then bend up to the top as well. That’s why we put something underneath the foot that will tilt the foot straight.

I will show you what we mean, say the foot leans inward like this, we would put something tilted so that when a child stands on it they are tilted straight and that’s how we correct Gene Valgum in most cases.

Enjoy your Friday!

For appointments and other queries:
Call: +971 4 3435390
WhatsApp: +971 50 331 4978

So, to fix it of course we can drill out the corn but it will keep coming back because the bone dropped down. What we do is we have to lift the foot here so we could use something like this for the person to wear underneath the foot, using this small ball-shaped pad to lift these bones back up, so that we don’t have the corn coming back again.

We also need to make the foot tighter again to help squeeze the metatarsals to keep it up. To do that we would use something these tapes – they bind the forefoot together and you would apply here every day for 2 weeks to lift these bones up.

Then, these red muscles that we can see on the foot – these should be intensified and that’s what these tiny little electro muscle stimulators are used for. You can put them on your foot for about 10 minutes a day and that innovates these muscles here, so this is for muscle innervation. This is neuromuscular tapes and that’s to keep the ligaments together (the ligaments here are highlighted blue).

Finally, you must wear something like this for about 3 months to lift the ball of your foot pad, but we have to do it gradually just like dental braces capitated too quickly we have to do it in stages so we would lift you up 5 degrees, lift you up 10 degrees and then lift you up 15 degrees to to get the transverse arch lifted back up again and finally if it is an issue with the corn on the right side of the 5th toe, we would simply ask you to stand and we would draw around your feet using a pencil and trim out the shape then we would match your foot guide to your shoe just to show you your 5th toe is extending beyond the width of the shoe and would ask you to get wider shoe, that how we are going to fix the problem of the 5th toe. So hope that helps for foot corns and enjoy your Friday.

For appointments and other queries:
Call: +971 4 3435390
WhatsApp: +971 50 331 4978

foot shape is when you’re just standing up. So, have somebody draw around your feet using an A4 piece of paper, and then trim round it on the line that you’ve just drawn. Then you get your actual foot, because the feet get a little bit larger when you stand on them, if you draw a line while you’re sitting they maybe half a shoe size smaller because the arch depresses slightly when you put your body weight on to your feet.

Then what you can do when you’re in a shoe shop you can take the liner out of the shoe. Most liners are not glued in very well at the beginning until you’ve walked on them for some time, then they get more sticky and difficult to remove. For example, this one is curved in the end so when we place this on it is not going to go all the way to the back because the curve just contours your heel bone.

So, it goes something like this and it has a little bit more space because obviously when you’re running the fat pad under the ball of your foot allows the foot to slide back and forward slightly, so we don’t ever want to get a shoe that fits your foot exactly. We always want a little bit of space, and you see this white cut-out fits this shape absolutely perfectly, so this would be a perfect shape. Or, if you’re going to buy work shoes you would take this cutting, otherwise some work shoes can bite the foot at the sides here, if it presses on this bone it can enlarge, and if it presses on the fifth toe too much you can get a toe corn.

Moving on to children’s shoes, if you look a little bit closer at this you actually see some white lines on the top here of the insole (if I just bring it into focus a little bit like this). The white lines on the top here are most helpful when you are doing a fitting for children’s shoes. Adidas are very helpful because they put this little line at the back. So, you take this out of the shoe and then the child would stand on it, and make sure that their heel comes to that white line not the back, pink line. When they stand on it their toes should just come to this first line here. When it comes to the first line that is the perfect fitting when you buy new shoes. Then over the next six months as a child begins to grow (or three months depending on the growth rate) you don’t want them to grow anymore up above that last white line. So, that is their growth grid line there, and they can grow over three to six months.

You could take this out of the shoe and have your child stand on it and do the shoe fitting yourself (if you want to do it yourself). Adidas are most helpful with that, or do this method if you’re going to go for a different brand because Adidas is the only one that does it. So, you can draw a line around your child’s foot, trim it out, take them into the shoe shop and take the liner out of the shoe and match the two up just to make sure they have that little bit of growth space at the end.

Thank you for listening and enjoy your Friday!

For appointments and other queries:
Call: +971 4 3435390
WhatsApp: +971 50 331 4978