The arc of history is long, but the decisions of our ancestors have bent it towards us being at the top of our ecological niche. Homo Erectus committed our species to bipedalism, and for the past 1.8 million years,we have been coming to terms with both the advantages and disadvantages of becoming the ‘walking ape’. Walking upright makes us more energy-efficient and, probably contributed to us becoming the dominant species on the plane. At the same time, this evolutionary choice can be attributed directly to the occurrence of back, knee and foot pain because it makes us inherently unstable,making us more liable to slip and fall. It has been incredibly challenging to create a mathematical model which explains and emulates our upright posture; it was only in the 1970s that Merton Root (USA) first defined the gait cycle using ideas of normalcy. Since then, the theoretical analysis of foot function has evolved from tissue stress theory to sagittal plane facilitation to innate axial myofascial hypertonicity. The theories underlying gait analysis continue to develop. At Footmap, we are committed to using the latest research and most effective clinical methods to help you with your foot and lower limb problems.
As a multi-disciplinary practise, we have osteopaths and nutritionists and foot health practitioners all working together to ensure that our patients have the best treatments possible. Our treatments range from soft tissue procedures to active release therapy (ART) to acupuncture to orthotic prescription. At Footmap, we are proud to be able to offer such a wide range of, for example, within the orthotic arena alone, we have over 28 different types. Each type has its advantages & disadvantages, fundamentally each of the orthotics we prescribe is designed to alleviate some of the pain and hopefully rectify some of the damage being caused to the body by biomechanical dysfunction.
At Footmap, we have been treating patients for over 15 years, and we understand that the hardest part of any treatment is not the implementation but the analysis. We often get patients referred to us after having tried everything and spending a fortune. We have patients coming to us after accruing a bag full of orthotics, with many of them only partially beneficial, and having spent every week at a physio or chiropractor for six months(and at £55- £65 per session that amounts to over £1500). It is too easy to offer an orthotic as a panacea to anyone with biomechanical dysfunction. Still, without a proper analysis of the foot, you can end up with an orthotic that does little more than support the foot. At Footmap,We pride ourselves in not prescribing any treatment unless we are confident that it will provide a positive result. We guarantee that if a prescription doesn’t work we will continue to work with you FREE OF CHARGE, and if after trying everything we can, we still don’t get the result we both want we will refund the total cost of the treatment.