Tag: hallux valgus

Products that can help your bunions

Bunion correctors are braces or splints which can be used through the night and are intended to help the position of the great toe or hallux in people who have bunions. Bunions are an enlargement of the great toe or hallux joint of the foot that is related to what is known as a valgus deformity of the great toe or hallux. The splint keeps the big toe in the ideal position throughout sleep in order to correct the deformity. There certainly is a lot of debate regarding if this works or not. The trouble with the idea is that bunions develop from a combination of a hereditary element, foot biomechanics and the use of tight wrongly fitted footwear. So during the day you will have all those forces producing the bunion along with the expectation is that using the bunion correctors at nighttime over comes those forces which happen when walking throughout the day, and that is probably not feasible.

For that reason should you use bunion correctors? There is some data that they could actually improve the angle of the great toe or hallux by a few degrees after having a month or so of use. There has been no research carried out to see if that progress gets any better with a long term use or if that progress is just temporary in the event you quit using the splint. Irrespective of that, a lot of clinicians advise still using them even though they don't change the angle of the toe. This is because, even if they do not correct the toe, they are going to still keep your toe mobile and flexible which is a good thing for your toe over the long term as the bunion condition advances. As well as using these correctors it's also most likely essential that you get expert advice about the ideal shoes to wear to counteract the bunion from getting any worse and also do some exercises to enhance the muscle strength around the joint.

Are the bunion correctors any good at fixing bunions?

Bunions really are a very common problem of the foot. Bunions are primarily due to the footwear which can be too tight pressing the big toe over and causing the metatarsophalangeal joint at the base of the big toe to become bigger. That is what a bunion is. The continuing stress from the shoe can become very painful and osteoarthritis can occur in the joint. They are more common in females, most likely since they're very likely to use more firmly fitting high heel shoes. The only method to eliminate them would be to have surgery. As we walk on our feet and that great toe or hallux is a vital joint, surgery on that joint is connected with a period of at least a few months of impairment after the surgery. For that reason, many people prefer to stay away from the surgical option if they can.

There are really no conservative alternatives to eliminate them. However, there are numerous conservative solutions that can stop them being painful, however they are unable to make them go away. There are the bunion correctors which are splints which you use during the night which are purported to fix the angle of the toe. These bunion correctors do keep your big toe mobile and flexible which is a good thing, but they don't make anymore than a few degrees change to the angle of the toe. Exercises to keep the metatarsophalangeal joint mobile and flexible are frequently useful with some of the pain which could develop inside the joint. When there is pain on the big toe joint from stress from the footwear, then it's vital that the shoes be broad enough and fitted appropriately. Various pads could be used to keep pressure off the enlarged metatarsophalangeal joint. These non-surgical alternatives is not going to make them disappear, but they go along way to helping any pain that they can have from them.