Can orthotics cause problems ?
Yes, they most certainly can and often do if made improperly or used improperly. In many cases improving muscular function can resolve your problems. In such cases where this "remedy" approach is not used, rather an orthotic is used, the problem still exists but is "band-aided" by the orthotic. Your chief symptoms can go away but the underlying problem remains brewing in the background causing further problems further up the body's muscular kinetic chain (all too often we have patients come into our office with knee, hip or low back pain that has begun several months or years after the initiation of orthotic use only to find that the poorly made orthotic is the root cause of subtle altered biomechanics). Thus, many times we find that a patients problems when they come into the office are from an improperly made or prescribed orthotic which masked their initial problem but which have now created another problem. In these cases the true initial muscular problem needs to be resolved and either the orthotic needs to be removed, ammended or modifided with a posting ( click here, to see our book for such higher level problems, modifications and problem foot types from deformities, surgeries, and developmental problems ).