Orthotic Sandals: Do They Really Work?

Its been a really long and terrific Spring and Summer here in southern Ontario, and over the course of that time we have dispensed quite a few custom orthotic sandals to patients who had previously been wearing our orthotic devices in their shoes. All along we had stressed that functionally these would NOT be!, NORE were they intended to be! substitutes for their existing control combination of custom orthotic and enclosed stable footwear. OK perhaps we went overboard a bit, but we were keen that our patients understood our desires for them to have the best possible control, as much of the time as they were physically active.

Anyway we were getting great feed back on follow up checks on these orthotic devices/sandals. Not just how neat they were, or how cool they looked, but actual complements on how good their feet felt and how long they were wearing them. One of the most frequent observations was that patients were looking forward to using them in place of indoor shoes or slippers during the cooler months, Not that those will ever return.

In light of this we decided to use our pedigait technology to investigate what if anything these devices would do to for individuals who due to structural misalignments are forced to pronate heavily during locomotion. The following video demonstrates the overwhelming results very clearly. My apologies for the editing of the commentary and the hand held video of the pedigait software comparing the two synchronized images. In real time it is so clear and compelling i had to try and at least capture it. Promise i will try and do similar comparisons in future presentations with greater clarity.