Here's What Your Shoes Are Really Telling You About Your Aches & Pain

When buying a new pair of shoes, how often are you looking for something to help ease your aches and pains?

Perhaps you've started to develop some knee pain, or your feet and ankles just aren't tolerating the old pair you've been trudging around in. The bottom line is that we're often looking to spend our hard-earned on a modern shoe that helps improve your quality of life.

Traditionally we might gravitate towards some greater arch-support or a thicker heel. The idea being, that adding these features may help correct what might be causing our aches and pains.

But what if they don't correct anything?

Yes, they can certainly improve how things feel - otherwise, we wouldn't be having this conversation. But are they creating a genuine, permanent change, or just wallpapering over some cracks?

Unfortunately, despite how good those new shoes may make you feel, it may actually be the latter.

However, we can actually take this information and use it to our advantage. We can take note of how a shoe changes the way we feel, take the time to understand why, go looking for the underlying root issue and ultimately correct it.

So let's discuss how you can use your shoes to figure out the cause of your aches and pains and correct them.

The curse of modern shoe technology

Modern shoes have a lot of bells and whistles. And thanks in part to some brilliant advertising, we're made to feel like we need them.

Basic shoe staples like arch support and a thick heel at the back are often our natural go-to when wanting to influence our aches and pains. But as mentioned before, these benefits really just last while you're actually just wearing your shoe. They don't create any positive underlying mechanical changes to the way we move - because they can't. In fact, you could mount a very strong case that they do the opposite over time, but we'll leave that deep rabbit hole for another day.

The benefits of most modern shoes are really comparable to a more long-term version of sports tape. They do a job until you kick them off. And this is fine of course if they help improve your day-to-day quality of life. But we need to make sure we are working on the underlying causes of our aches and pains so that they go away. You shouldn't be cornered into buying just one pair of shoes because they're the only ones you can tolerate wearing.

However, when we circle back to the topic of this article, we can take the effects of each pair of shoes on your discomfort and decipher what's you could be missing behind the scenes.

What Your Shoes Are Really Telling You

When you put on a pair of shoes take a moment to get a sense of how they make you feel.

What changes from shoe to shoe?

So let's figure some things out.

Here are a list of a few common characteristics of modern shoes, how they make us feel nicer, and what they might be hiding.

1. Arch Support

Arch support is a highly sought-after feature with many shoes. It often makes a shoe a "good shoe". We value arch support mainly because so many of us have arches that collapse or flatten. So it makes sense on the surface to help protect against this. After all, this poor arch function has the potential to influence so much lower leg dysfunction.

Issues like plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendinitis, shin splints, knee pain, ITB syndrome, and even hip and low back pain can relate in some way to collapsing arches. And it's no surprise that a pair of shoes with some added arch support can seriously improve how these issues feel. But again, this will only occur while you wear your shoes - and only those specific shoes.

What's actually happening here, is that arch support is certainly helping to stop the arch from collapsing, but it isn't stopping an arch from wanting to collapse.

And it can't. Because as we've explained before, most collapsing arches are the very end result of broader dysfunction at the ankle, hip, and/or low back. It's a by-product of how your entire legs function.

So if you benefit from a little arch support in your shoes, then take the time to explore the ideas presented in the linked article above. By addressing any broader strength and mobility concerns, you can begin to reclaim better arch function and rely less on added arch support.

2. Heels

Over the years modern shoes have developed some serious heels. And we aren't talking about traditional women's heels. Men's business shoes, sneakers, and casual shoes along with an alarming number of kid’s shoes have a heel at the back. And the idea makes sense. A thicker heel aids in shock absorption if you heel strike when walking or running, and helps to unload the calf and Achille.

So if you have calf and Achilles pain a heeled shoe might make you feel a lot better. But again, if an added heel does help then we need to continue to ask why. After all, your feet have all the heels they supposedly need, don't they?

Clinically, extra comfort from an added heel may mean that your ankles are stiffer than they could be. Interestingly, heeled shoes are one of the biggest contributors to ankle stiffness we see in the modern world. The height of the heel is the exact amount of ankle range you don't get access to while wearing them. So it's easy to lose it over time.

And this lack of ankle range can be one of the main reasons we can't naturally absorb shock on our own without a shoe's help. It just doesn't allow our ankle to have the quality and quantity of 'give' that it should.

So, if you benefit from any form of heel at the back of your shoe, take the time to check out your ankle mobility. Any hidden restriction here could be the real reason your feet, calves, and ankles don't feel great, and the crack a heeled shoe might be wallpapering over.

Learn more about how heeled shoes might actually be causing ankle stiffness here.

3. Thick Soles

Thicker soles protect us from the ground and add a few sneaky inches to our height. But if you feel like a thicker sole helps you better tolerate the surfaces you're standing or walking on, this may also give clues as to what you might be missing.

If you need thicker soles - especially over being barefoot, this may suggest your feet are a little stiffer, weaker, and more de-sensitized than they could be. The soles of our feet also have the tendency to toughen up when walking barefoot on rougher surfaces, which might also be lacking for those frequently wearing thicker soled shoes.

A great place to start for those in this boat is to take a tennis ball or lacrosse ball, stand up, and let it press into the soles of your feet. Gently grinding away any tissue tightness and tenderness can breathe some life back into tired feet and you won't have to rely on those thick, rigid soles for too long.

How to Fix Your Issues

If you're beginning to hear what your shoes might actually be telling you, consider coming to see us here at Laguna Orthopedic Rehabilitation. Our expert Physical Therapists can help you connect these hidden dots and design a corrective exercise program.

Give us a call on (949) 443 5442 and improve your pain today!