Icon Orthotics® – The Solution

Posted on: Monday, July 15th, 2013

icon orthoticsIcon Orthotics provides a total contact Foot Orthotic that is in fact a true Arch Support. Our orthotics gently manipulate the foot’s twenty six bones into a position that remains very close to their ideal supinated or “locked up” and stable position to prepare the foot for the impact forces generated at Heel Strike. Then as your weight and center of gravity progresses over your foot as it is flat on the ground in Mid Stance, our orthotics allow a controlled and subsequently non-pathologic amount of pronation or unlocking of the bones of the foot to occur.

But most importantly, by helping the bones of the foot to maintain their correct aligned and congruent position during midstance, the foot will naturally “rebound” or begin to re-supinate during Mid to Late Midstance as the body’s weight passes over the foot to once again become the “rigid lever arm” necessary to prevent direct injury to the foot as well as to prevent adverse rotational forces from being generated up and along the entire kinetic chain at toe off or propulsive phase. Conversely, pushing off of an unlocked or pronated foot will cause and allow excessive ranges of motion throughout the entire skeletal system and kinetic chain that subsequently places all of the bones and their joints at the end of their ranges of motion which dramatically increases the chance for premature joint destruction and injury.

An important note here is to realize that any amount of pronation or unlocking of the bones of the foot past the point of what is necessary for normal shock absorption and function adversely affects the bones and joints of the entire body. Additionally, the potential injury to the muscular system that helps control the kinetic chain should be noted as we have mainly touched on the adverse effects on the bones and joints of the body.

The muscles of the body attempt to lift, maneuver and move us as we instruct them to do, however just as we do not consciously tell our hearts to beat, we do not consciously tell our muscles to not function to maintain our alignment. For example, if there is an excessive torque generated at the knee secondary to excessive pronation, the muscles in the various compartments of the upper and lower leg will attempt to compensate for or correct this force whether we tell them to or not. This unnecessary extra work load translates first into increased activity that requires additional energy, but over time this continued inefficiency will translate into “overuse syndromes” and “chronic injury”. A classic example is Posterior Tibial Tendonitis and Dysfunction. If your arch completely collapses, this muscle has to work ten times harder to hold up your arch to maintain your foot in a more optimal and structurally sound position. And since the bone of the foot are past the point where they can physically articulate to take the major brunt of the bodies weight as described above, the Posterior Tibialis Tendon fires continuously during mid stance and propulsive phases in an attempt to keep the arch in a more neutral position. This of course demonstrates why Posterior Tibial Tendonitis and Dysfunction is so prominent in those patients who excessively pronate.

These are just a few examples but there are literally dozens of examples of this type of mechanically induced pathology throughout the entire kinetic chain that result in most of the diagnoses and syndromes described in the “More Indications” section of this web site. But the point here of course is that if you just corrected and better controlled the bodies skeletal alignment, the muscles would not attempt to compensate for this and you would become significantly less prone to injury in general; boney or muscular or both.

In summary, we simply allow the bones of the foot to do what they naturally do; support the body weight by locking into and amongst each other, thus naturally creating a stable structure similar in concept to a Roman arch way. This is literally all we have to achieve with our orthotics because if the foot does not collapse too severely as the body’s full weight passes directly over the foot, the natural inherent stability afforded by the boney architecture of the foot in itself will support the bodies full weight and directly influence and affect the entire kinetic chain positively by keeping all of the bones at and above the ankle in good alignment, thereby keeping all of the associated joints at and above the ankle in the center of their ranges of motion. This is to say that by directly controlling the bones of the foot, we can directly and causatively prevent adverse rotational forces from being generated up and along the entire kinetic chain at toe off or propulsive phase. This effect alone is enough to prevent injury and damage to the bones, joints and muscles of the entire kinetic chain and is the very reason why we so dramatically affect our patient’s ankles, knees, hips and backs.

See how we compare in results to other labs orthotics and other technologies in general in our “Icon Orthotics vs. Other Orthotic Labs” section of this web site.