Data from the US estimates that they spend 1.2 billion dollars per year on orthotics. With this many people using orthotics there must be a range of benefits to their use, but what are the main ones?
Well, there are a huge number of specific benefits that people report once they start wearing orthotics that range from improvements in pain from plantar fasciitis to bursitis and even osteoarthritis.
We live in a time where there is an epidemic of lower body pain in the developed world. If we were to combine the social impact of all the back pain, hip pain, knee pain, ankle pain, foot pain and lower body osteoarthritis we would see that it is a modern healthcare disaster.
There are 2 major factors that influence and create this incomprehensible mess created by a technologically advanced culture :
Urban Terrain
We live far longer lives than our ancestors did and we do so on extremely hard unnatural surfaces. Concrete, tarmac and paving stones put horrendous amounts of strain on the soft tissues in the lower body. The flatness of our urban and domestic surfaces also contributes to the problem because it requires no balance, our stabilising muscles don’t get the kind of workout nature imposes on them.
Sedentary Lifestyle
We are probably less than 70% less active than our great grandparents were as of now, they lead far more physical lives on average. Who knows how we stack up against our hunter gatherer ancestors... not great is the broad answer. This inactivity leads to weakness and the weakness leads to pain.
The Benefits Of Wearing Orthotics
There are 3 basic mechanisms that form the basis of all the more tangible and specific help with symptoms that foot orthotics offer.
