Pilates & Podiatry: How Pilates can help your feet!

Every day the team here at Sole Motion Podiatry have the privilege of helping patients with pain and injury in their feet and legs. Almost always, part of the treatment and prevention strategy will include components of stretching and strengthening. Often, it is actually weak or tight muscles that cause the problem to develop in the first place. Either way, it’s an important step.

Unfortunately, because a majority of foot problems make it difficult to walk and bear weight on the feet, it can make following a stretching and strengthening plan difficult. So today, we thought we’d focus on an activity that can help you regain your strength and flexibility while you recover from your injury: Pilates!


Pilates is great for both stretching and strengthening
It doesn’t need to be said that Pilates is great for both stretching and strengthening. Depending on the class you take, a large component of pilates typically involves static stretching – the kind that moves your joints and muscles through their full range of motion and pushes them past that to improve long-term flexibility. Pilates can also have an element of repeated movements, or dynamic stretches, which work to warm up and loosen joints. These get you ready for the day ahead and reduce the risk of injury throughout your day.


Pilates doesn’t require standing on injured feet
Pilates exercises are often done in a non-weight bearing (off your feet) or with not a great deal of pressure on your feet, so are ideal when you want to avoid pressure away from injured bones and structures. Exercises that may aggravate your injury are relatively easily adjusted to conduct the same movement but without the pressure. This means you recover faster while gaining the strength and flexibility you need.


Pilates allows you to focus in on your muscles and technique
Usually, when we carry out movements and activities, there is so much going on at the same time and we’re having input from so many senses that it can be difficult to focus in on the goal. The relaxed nature of pilates allows our brain to really hone in on the muscle or joints that we are working, and allow us to really feel any weakness or tightness present. This gives us a greater opportunity to focus on our technique and get our alignment right, so we get the most out of these exercises.


Your feet aren’t affected by shoes
Shoes have a great influence on the alignment of our feet and legs when we’re on our feet, and may make it more difficult for us to perform certain target movements. Stretching and strengthening without our shoes means we can carry out more precise movements, such as the curling of our toes and the inwards/outwards movement of our feet without being restricted by the tops of our shoes around our ankles.


Pilates is great for your whole body
As an added benefit we’ll add that while pilates is great for the feet and legs, you’re also working your whole body at the same time. When we treat your feet and legs, we always think of your whole body and the impact from your feet up. Maintaining good overall body conditioning and strength will help reduce your risk of injury in the future and will generally help you to feel better!

After years of treating foot and leg pain, we understand how difficult it can be to follow your rehab plan when you’re in pain, and we believe this is a great solution. To find out more about what strengthening and stretching exercises are best for your injury, give our expert podiatry team a call on 1300 – FIX – FEET. You’ll be able to take the exercises we prescribe to your pilates session and we can show you the most effective ways of integrating them in.

For a recommendation on a great pilates instructor in the area, we highly recommend Julie Ojeda from Pilates Nation. You can also check out her Facebook and Instagram! And while you’re there – don’t forget to have fun and say hi from us!

Justin & the team at Sole Motion Podiatry
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Podiatry Clinic Point Cook

Laser therapy or cortisone – which is better?

If you’ve ever damaged a muscle, tendon, ligament or joint, you’ll know how incredibly painful and frustrating it can be. When the injury is in the area of your feet or legs, you feel it with every step you take. It can stop you from carrying out even the simplest daily activities and household chores. It can interfere with your ability to work, and importantly, your ability to spend time with your family and those you care about.

In that moment, you just want something – anything – to ease the pain. Low level laser therapy (LLLT) and cortisone injections are two of the main options you may consider. But what’s the real difference between the two and which is better? Here are five facts that you need to consider.

1. Cortisone inhibits healing, laser promotes it

Cortisone impairs the healing process, meaning it’ll take longer for your injury to heal. This is because cortisone works by reducing inflammation at an injured area. Inflammation is our body’s response to injury and a cause of pain. It is also the process by which the body heals and repairs itself. Inflammation directs blood flow to the injured area which carries the materials our cells need for regeneration and repair. Because cortisone limits the inflammatory process, it impacts the rate at which the body repairs the injured area.

Laser, on the other hand, promotes healing and repair. It works by a photochemical process which affects the tissues at a cellular level. This results in:

Faster wound healing
Rapid cell growth
Less scar tissue formation
Improved circulation
Reduced swelling
Stimulated nerve function

2. Cortisone puts you at risk of causing further injury, laser doesn’t

The pain-relieving effects that cortisone is most used for can be effective, but do nothing to repair the injury, instead merely masking the symptoms. During this pain-free time, you begin to use the injured tendon or area as you normally would if it was uninjured. It’s easy to do when you don’t feel any pain and so don’t know that a particular action is actually causing further strain and damage to the injured site. This means you are left off with more damage than when you started, which you’ll then feel once the cortisone wears off.

Laser doesn’t mask the symptoms like cortisone, so your body still ‘guards’ against movements and positions that’ll cause further injury and pain. Paired with the enhanced healing effects of laser, you don’t have that same risk (or any risk if you’re careful) of worsening your injury.

3. Cortisone will wear off, the effects of laser are long-term
The effects of cortisone are short-lived and temporary. Various researchers have unanimously described cortisone as “a short-term treatment of a chronic problem”. Many studies and physicians agree that the duration of pain relief cannot be guaranteed above two months. The length of time can vary greatly between patients and are influenced by the overall health, the amount of inflammation and its cause. Generally speaking, the effects of cortisone can last from several days to several months. It is the hope that in this time, the body will have repaired enough to relieve symptoms once the cortisone has worn off. However, for many of our patients, this is not the case, and their pain persists.

Laser, on the other hand, works by stimulating healing and repair to deliver the best long-term results. Its focus is on getting the body to efficiently repair the injury and get the affected tissues back to full strength and function. Therefore, while it may not deliver the same numbing effects as cortisone initially, it delivers the better long-term results by a mile and keeps your overall strength and health as a priority.

4. Cortisone has many potentially harmful side effects, laser has none
Cold laser therapy has no harmful side effects, with the FDA finding no red flags or adverse effects, other than just needing to avert your eyes from the infrared light of the laser. This makes it the perfect option for those that are health conscious.

Unfortunately, cortisone does come with a long list of harmful side effects. These range from weakening the tendons and cartilage in the injected area, to “cortisone flares” in 2% of patients, to infections at the injection site. Cortisone also impairs healing, encourages more scar tissue formation, inhibits growth hormone release, impairs calcium uptake in bone, to name a few.

5. Laser has shown superior results to cortisone in clinical studies
Research into various tendinopathies and conditions conclude that while cortisone provides pain-relief in the short-term, their effectiveness has not been demonstrated long-term. Laser has repeatedly shown positive clinical results and efficacy in the short, medium and long-term. It is described as a “promising and consistent treatment for tendinopathies”. It has shown to boost the effectiveness of strengthening exercises and other treatment modalities.

In our clinical experience at Sole Motion Podiatry, we find laser therapy to be superior to cortisone in producing the best long-term outcomes for our patients. Our focus is on delivering the most effective, safe and pain-free results for our patients, and laser therapy achieves all of this and more. We love the results that laser therapy achieves and have seen countless patients back on their feet and out of pain much faster than expected. We successfully manage a range of conditions including tendinopathies, ligament strains and even arthritic pain.

For more information about the laser or to book an appointment, give us a call on 1300-FX-FEET!
References:
Clin Orthop Relat Res 2008 Jul 466(7) 1539-54
Photomed Laser Surg 2014 May 15
J Pain Res 2015 8 247-52
J Mech Behav Biomed Mater 2013 Sep 9 29C 272-285