It's funny how things change over time. When I was a teenager if anyone had said to me I needed orthotic insoles in my shoes I'd have probably cried and told them no way, they are just for old ladies! Nowadays things are changing, research shows that the orthotic insole market will reach around 3.5 billion dollars by the year 2020. With the increase of diabetes, arthritis and obesity more and more people are seeing their podiatrists and finding that an orthotic insole would help to alleviate some of their problems.
At the age of 44 years I am one of those people. I have been suffering with pain and various foot issues for quite a few years now and some of it I thought was bad luck (verrucas) and others I put down my being overweight. When I first saw a private podiatrist back in 2014 he treated my verrucas and tidied my feet up and I was very happy when the verruca went but the pain didn't so I headed back to see him again.
It was at this point he gave me a visual bio-mechanical assessment and declared I have short calf muscles and these are throwing my body alignment out of sync. As we talked and I told him of having been a tip-toe walker as a child, always having my feet positioned at ten-to-two and the amount of ankle sprains I have had in my life, he said it all made sense and could be the cause of my early-onset arthritis of the knees, the pain in the ball of my feet and my tight and uncomfortable calf muscles.
To cut a long story short, I was lucky enough to be able to be referred to an NHS podiatrist (as I am bio-mechanically incorrect) and have been seen over the last couple of years. I'm stretching every day (in all sorts of ways), I've had an MRI to rule out a Mortons Neuroma and if things haven't improved with my continuing stretching and the use of my orthotic insoles I'll be referred for calf lengthening surgery in a few months.