“Why would someone call a podiatrist if they have hip pain?”
Well as the song goes……….. the foot bones connected to the knee bone and we all know how the rest of the song goes. What alot of people tend to forget is all our bones are connected and if one area in the body is out of alignment it can make the rest of the body become misaligned also.
“The pain experienced in the hips can be caused by the feet being misaligned”
The pain might not be debilitating, but it might be stopping the person it is effecting carrying out the activities they love. Or the pain might be preventing them performing the activities to the best of their abilities.
Our practitioners treat a lot of athletes in the Hip To Toe Clinic to help them achieve their best performance. The muscles are able to function more effectively when the subluxations in the joints are removed. When the muscles are functioning more effectively they can get more from them before they fatigue
“Why Hip Replacements Don’t Always Get Rid of the Pain”
Below is the Journey of one of our clients who had both of her hip joints replaced, but still suffered from a considerable amount of hip pain.
X-rays of her hips, see figure 14.6 below, showed:
“After two hip replacements this lady was still in pain”
Just looking at the x-ray of the hips it is clear there are a number of problems. The hip did not end up looking like this overnight, or in isolation. This amount of degeneration of the joints, and development of spurs, was happening for a protracted period of time before the hip surgery.
When I met this client our practitioner could see a number of subluxations in the joints of the feet, knees and hips just by looking at them. On account of the misalignment of the feet, there was years of uneven wear and tear in the knees and hips. Figures 14.7 to 14.9 below, are the x-rays of the feet showing subluxation in a number of the joints.
“After one of our practitioners took x-rays of the women’s feet the real issues could be seen”
The x-rays show:
Overall it is clear to see there are a number of problems and these problems have been going on for a long time. Due to the subluxations in the joints of the feet there has been inefficient use of the muscles which in turn has led to uneven wear and tear in the hips. When the feet are out of alignment, then the body does not have a strong foundation to stand and walk on. This causes the legs, knees and hips to compensate, to rotate and to wear unevenly.
It is this misalignment which has led to years of wear and tear and eventually to the need for the hip replacements. Even after the replacements there was still pain and restrictions due to the fact that the underlying cause of the problems had not been addressed.
In this situation, it was necessary to realign the joints of the feet, knees and hips in order to get the muscles to work efficiently and stop the grinding in the hip joint. Figures 14.10 to 14.13 show the new positions of the joints after three months of treatment.
