What does foot health have to do with knee pain?
The human body is incredibly adaptable. So if you have an imbalance your body will find a way to make it work. This is where the pain comes in! most of the time the majority of our weight rests on our seat or on our feet. We don’t drive around on flat tires or build houses on shifting sand. If the foundation is unstable or faulty the body won’t shut down altogether. It will make adjustments to accommodate the change or imbalance. Your body will work really hard to regain balance and stability.
The foundation of your body is your feet. Your feet are pretty small when compared to the size and weight of your body. They really are an engineering feet!
Your foot has three arches!
The weight of your physical body balances on three points in the foot. The ball of the foot, the outside of the foot behind the pink toe and the heal.
The heal is a round bone with no flat surface to rest on. Each of your feet is a three-legged-stool.
These arches provide shock absorption, muscle activation and balance all the way up your leg.
The shape of your arches, the angle, changes the way the foot and
everything above it functions or compensates for the arch.
https://tenni-mocs.com/blogs/tenni-blogs/the-arches-of-the-foot
The bones in the ankle are their own balancing act. In this image you can see the round surface of the heal bone. With just a couple of ligamental structures to hold the ankle together it is easy to imagine how flexibility was key component of function for this joint.
If there is an imbalance in the foot it puts strain on the ankle – and as mentioned above our body doesn’t just stop working. The ankle will accommodate the imbalance.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lateral_collateral_ligament_of_ankle_joint.png
That accommodation looks like this…
https://heelthatpain.com/foot-arch-type-test/
You can probably imagine how an injury, a habit or an imbalance say over working one set of muscles or underworking another could pull this joint out of alignment.
Once there is an imbalance or injury you can have swelling, reduced range of motion (temporary, semi-permanent or permanent). So what does that mean for the knee?
Varus Valgus
This image really brings home how important ankle health is to the knee. But what if your ankle is properly aligned but just has a reduced range of motion? Not moving can be just as detrimental as dysfunctional movement.
If you have high arches your knees will have varus alignment and if your feet are flat or your arches are reduced you will have valgus knee alignment.
Your knee is a really flexible joint that consists of cartilage, sandwiched between bones, connected by tendons and ligaments. All of these parts are passive, then don’t move or apply force. The major stability in knee comes from muscles above and below the knee. Muscles are what actively apply force. The construction of the knee is like janga or dominos but none of the parts have flat surfaces to rest on. The lower leg bones balance on the ankle bones, the femur balances on a wafer of cartilage in a fluid sack. With all of these passive all of this requires contraction of the calf muscles, thigh (quadriceps) and hip muscles to help maintain balance.
Looking at the varus image above you can see that one side of the cartilage wafer is squished and the other is wide open. The valgus image shows the mirror disfunction.
You can “fix” the knee but if you don’t address the foot issue you will transfer the stress to the ankle and the hip joint.
Some common fixes for these misalignments include knee surgery, shoe inserts and yoga. In my past I have tried all of these and chiropractic, massage, physical therapy and anything else I could find. Shoe inserts are really effective if you never are without them. But they have consequences. Artificially holding up the arch in your foot will improve alignment but it won’t strengthen or activate the muscles in your feet. Using shoe inserts is a great way to reduce damage and risk while you strengthen your feet. If you would like more information about strengthening your feet and shoring up or reducing the arch of your foot please refer to the feet videos inside the community.