What is a bunion? The technical name for a bunion is hallux valgus. It becomes a problem in the big toe where the toe starts to malform in three different directions. It tends to bend towards the other toes, rotate and then elevate. The big problem with this is that it can become inflamed, tender and it really affects your gait, your ability to walk, and your ability to exercise.
And so you’re constantly shifting your weight on other parts of your foot and ankle, and then this throws off the symmetry of your muscles. You might end up with knee pain or hip pain because of the compensation.
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What causes bunions?
If you will ask what are bunions caused from, so there are three main causes of the problem:
- Your shoes that you wear are not fitting your feet correctly. Maybe, the toe is too pointed or the shoe is too narrow and this is causing your big toe to go inward. Unfortunately, these fashion shoes today are not designed to keep your toes nice and open and straight. The best thing to do when you’re buying a shoe is to take the bottom of the shoe and then match your foot to see, if there’s space enough for your toes. And if there isn’t, you’re going to have to find some shoes that actually can really give your toes some space. That’s not necessarily going to correct this problem, but it can definitely prevent the problem (learn more about Interesting Benefits of Walking Barefoot).
- Having flat feet can create a problem with big toe because there’s no arch, you’re constantly shifting the weight forward to the toes, especially the big toe, and then that can affect the dynamics of how you step. Then the foot flares out and we have a lot of pressure on that toe. The toe starts going outward this way.
- Simply having ankle mobility issues that could come from an old injury to your ankle or your foot, which then it caused compensation, or it can be from having an aroma on your foot, or a heel spur, or any number of reasons including over training. The solution is going to be involving putting flexibility back into the ankle, which is a lot of the calf muscles that we’re going to be dealing with.
How to fix bunions and how to get rid of them?
- If you have shoes that are not fitting correctly, you need to get some shoes that do fit your toes, and this also includes getting socks that are not too tight around the toes. There are socks now that individually fit your toes, and that might be a really good type of sock that you should get. This way, you keep that separation.
- Silicone toe spreaders. This is just a simple device that you can put these little spacers between your toes to keep the separation. And you would wear these a couple hours in the evening to help start to spread the toes.
- The exercises, which is probably going to be the most important thing to focus on.
The best exercises for bunions
The best procedure for bunions is exercises:
- The first exercise you want to do is focusing on rotation of the foot. You’re going to be making circles of the foot. There’s a really good exercise that you can do, where you’re sitting in a chair and you’re bringing your knee up with your arms, so you’re isolating the lower leg, and then you’re going to try to draw a complete circle with your toes clockwise. You’re just going to go slowly to focus on the form to make sure you get that complete circle. It’s actually difficult to do at first because there are certain muscles that are too tight in other muscles, that are to atrophied or loose. But doing this circular exercise will start to put in symmetry into that ankle. You can simply start with like 10 rotations clockwise with your right foot okay and then do 10 counterclockwise with your right foot. Then you would switch to the left foot and do 10 clockwise and 10 counter-clockwise, focusing on doing this slow and doing a complete circle without involving using the leg, so you want to isolate that ankle and you’re not rotating the entire lower leg. It would be one exercise to start with and do this each day.
- The second exercise would be just standing on a tennis ball for two minutes. You’re gonna have to work up to this, but you make sure the tennis ball is right in the mid part of the arch and you do one foot at a time, and you’re standing, and you’re putting all this pressure on the arch. This is really important for people that have flat feet. This will start to take pressure off these muscles that are really too tight and give you a lot of relief. What we’re trying to do with these exercises is put symmetry back into the ankle joint and muscles that are related to that. When you’re walking, you’re not favoring certain muscles, and then this will allow the toe to come back. What you’re doing is you’re correcting the muscles, the ligaments and the tendons. When you’re standing in a tennis ball, you know you might only be able to do it for 10 seconds. You’re going to gradually start working up to being able to do it for two minutes each foot once a day.
- The toe raises. You want to start sitting in a chair, and you’re simply going to raise your toes up both left and right at the same time. This is going to start to strengthen a muscle called the anterior tibialis, which are the muscles on the front part of the leg, the shin muscles. And you want to work up to just doing this 30 times. If you start to cramp, obviously stop and do what you can. You might be able to start with 10 and then go 20 and then 30 over time. Then once you get good with that, you can graduate to doing this standing. You’re going to be positioning yourself on a wall, so you’re at maybe a certain degree on a wall, and you’re going to be lifting up your toes that way.
- If we’re going to be working on the muscles on the front part of the leg, we also need to work on the back part of the legs. This would be calf raises. You should stand straight, then push to the balls of your feet and raise your heels until you are standing on your toes to start on a chair back and forth working your way up to 30 repetitions. Then when you get good with this, you would start doing it just standing up. You might want to hold the chair or the wall as you do these calf raises, you want to work up to 30. What you’re going to find is the muscles and the calf are going to be a lot stronger than the ones on the front part of your shin. This is why it’s going to be a lot easier to do the calf razors than the toe raises. But, if you want to do them both, you are going to be basically strengthening the weak length, which is the front part of your leg – the anterior tibialis. That’s going to give you a lot of relief on the big toe.
- The last exercise includes inverting the ankles as well as everting the ankles. You’re going to rock them back and forth while you’re sitting in a chair. You’re going to work up to 30 times, then when you get better with that you can do this standing. These exercises cover all the dynamics of the motion in your ankle and over time it’s going to really put symmetry back into both feet.
How to get instant relief from bunions
For example, you just have more inflammation in one big toe, not both of them. If you want to get some instant relief on that, a very simple thing to do would be to massage the opposite toe. Exactly where it’s hurting on the right side or the left side, you work on the exact opposite side.
And as you press into the opposite big toe joint on the mirror image side, you’re going to find it’s very tender, but it’s going to give you a tremendous amount of relief on the side that’s actually hurting. Of course, you wouldn’t want to do this, if it’s on both sides bilateral. You would only want to do that procedure, if it’s on one side.
However, if you do have it on both sides, you can start massaging with lotion on the inside space between the big toe and the second toe. This type of massage on both feet will give you a tremendous amount of relief, as you’re correcting these bunions.
Bunions are not genetic! Traditional shoes for the last 100 years are all shaped with a binding narrow toe shape, so from the start of wearing shoes, child or toddler age the foot binding begins. What you get is a bunion, the big toe is pushed inward. If you wear a shoe even slightly too small you will end up with hammered or curled toes because they are being pushed down. Natural toe splay from big to pinky toe will be the widest part of your foot, not the width of forefoot. Look into Dr. Ray McClanahan, sports podiatrist and inventor of correct toes spacers. His informative videos will open your eyes.