Blown
Ankle No More
Over 25 years ago I experienced a
particularly horrendous (& hideous) injury: while playing soccer, I was
slide-tackled with all the force directed toward my cleated and firmly planted
foot. The result of this was an eversion
sprain (rolled inwards, rather than the more common inversion ankle rolling
outwards injury), tearing all the ligaments on the inside of my ankle so badly
I had to be casted for 8 weeks. Nasty,
nasty, nasty…
This “bad” ankle has plagued me for
years. I have had an incredible amount
of therapy on it consisting of chiropractic, physio, and massage which have
helped it immensely but never fully restored its full balanced function. Conventional dogma and traditional teaching
led me to believe that because the ligamentous injury had been so severe it
would never be fully healed and would always need to be just managed so as to
avoid degenerative changes and related secondary injury to joints related to it
(ie the knee, hip, SI-joint and upper neck).
Because I am a Chiropractor and believe absolutely in the incredible
ability of the body to self-heal, I never was fully content with just managing my
“bad” ankle…
Along the way, I became interested in the
bodies biomechanics: its overall ability to move, function and maintain proper
posture. In 2007 I invested in a very
cool technology in my office to asses gait (the position and movement of the
feet related to standing and walking).
Basically, a person both stands then walks across a very sensitive
sensor pad that sends a lot of information to a computer which analyses gait
patterns and weight distribution. This
allows me to interpret imbalances in the gait pattern. If necessary and appropriate I can then send
this information and other measurements to a laboratory in Toronto to
manufacture state of the art orthotics based on dynamic motion (rather than a
more dated approach of estimating an ankles proper position without considering
gravity). A picture of my gaitscan
results are below (Figure 1) showing the pronation (rolling in) of my one
ankle. I did, for a 2 year period, wear
orthotics to help accommodate this imbalance which did help the symptoms. Repeat gaitscans did reveal the same degree
of pronation, therefore, the problem was not being corrected, just managed.
Then I read the book ‘Born To Run’ in 2009
and my mind was blown. This book exposed
concepts to me that in all my years of research I had never been exposed
to. Essentially, the book describes our
design as humans to allow us to run, which we traditionally have done either
bare-footed or with minimal footwear. It
also showed how most current footwear is weakening the muscles, ligaments and
tendons in our feet causing pronation and injury. The proposed solution was to return to
running barefoot or with minimalist shoes to restore strength and function to
the feet. WOW….this blew my mind – I
went for it!
I have been running with Vibram Five Fingers
for 4 seasons and now wear them daily in my office while working (this raises
both eyebrows and awareness!). Recently
we have hired a new Team member in our office and are training on all our
procedures; as part of this we repeated my gaitscan last week. The results AMAZED me (see Figure 2 below):
my gait patterns were fully restored, perfectly balanced and completely
healed!!! This has shown me the power of
the body to fully heal given the right conditions. It also gives me the confidence, in spite of
what much of the medical, physio, orthotic and corporate shoe communities are
saying, to encourage everyone to take this approach. Yes, injuries can occur, but it is a process
that needs to be approached gradually over a long period of time similar to
chiropractic corrective care – it will take at least a year, likely more, of
slowly increasing micro-changes.
This is critical to address and vital to
health because of the nervous system.
Any joint in the body has position sensors in it called
proprioceptors. Just as the motion of
your car turns the alternator which charges the cars battery, the motion of any
joint in the body stimulates these proprioceptors which literally charge your
brain. This increases brain energy and
function: Movement is Life! The highest concentration of proprioceptors
occurs in four joints: the ankle, the SI-joints, the upper neck vertebrae, and
the jaw. Therefore, movement of these
joints is critical to proper
brain function and is also why stretching, exercise and a specific Chiropractic
adjustment of these joints will improve your brain activity: Chiropractic is not about pain, it is about your brain!
So, get moving people! Get into your Chiropractor to get checked for
subluxations of these critical joints and have their motion restored through a
specific adjustment. Get out to our
“Barefoot Running Workshop” to learn more (check www.elkvalleychiropractic.com
for schedule)…kick it into action and get your brain ENERGISED!!!
2009
2012
