How to Fix Bunions in 3 Steps

let's talk about bunions how to prevent them and how to get rid of them now 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 now the big problem with this is that it can become inflamed tender and it really affects your gait your ability to walk 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 and now you might end up with knee pain or hip pain because of the compensation so what are the causes of this problem well there's three main causes one is that your shoes that you wear are not uh fitting your feet correctly maybe the toe is too pointed maybe 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 so the first thing you need to look at is your shoes um 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 now that's not necessarily going to correct this problem but it can definitely prevent the problem now number two um having flat feet like myself 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 and then the foot flares out and now we have a lot of pressure on that toe and so now the toe starts going outward this way and number three just simply having ankle mobility issues that could come from an old injury to uh 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 maybe as a child with some type of exercise so 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 so let's just dive right into it okay so number one if you have shoes that are not fitting correctly you need 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 they have socks now that individually fit your toes and that might be a really good type of sock that you should get so this way you keep that separation okay number two there is something called silicone toe spreaders okay so this is just a simple device that you can put these uh 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 and number three the exercises which is probably going to be the most important thing to focus on now 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 okay so you're isolating the lower leg and then you're going to try to draw a complete circle with your toes clockwise okay and you're just going to go slowly to focus on the form to make sure you get that complete circle and you're going to notice that it's 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 so you 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 uh using the leg so you wanna really isolate that ankle so you're not rotating the entire lower leg so that would be one exercise to start with and do this each day the second exercise i'm going to recommend would be just standing on a tennis ball for two minutes now 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 and 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 so what we're trying to do with these exercises is put symmetry uh back into the ankle joint and muscles that are related to that so when you're walking you're not favoring certain muscles and then this will allow the toe to come back now realize that the what's holding this thing in a certain position is the muscles so what you're doing is you're correcting the muscles the ligaments and the tendons so when you're standing in a tennis ball you know you might only be able to do it for 10 seconds so you're going to gradually start working up to being able to do it for two minutes each foot once a day all right the next exercise would be toe raises okay and 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 so and 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 these 30 times okay 30 times if you start to cramp obviously stop and do what you can but we're trying to strengthen on a nice slow uh gradient level the front part of the muscles in the lower leg okay so you're going to be sitting in a chair and raising up your toes these are called toe raises and i recommend working up to like 20 of these okay so you might be able to start with 10 and then go 20 and then 30 over time and 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 like maybe you're doing 30 degrees on a wall and you're going to be lifting up your toes that way and i put a link down below of a really good video just to kind of give you more information about that so if we're going to be working on the muscles on the front part of the leg now we need to work also on the back part of the legs so this would be calf raises okay 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 and then when you get good with this then you would start doing it um just standing up okay and you might want to hold the chair or the wall as you do these calf raises you want to work up to 30. now 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 and this is why it's going to be a lot easier to do the calf razors than the toe raises but i want you to do them both and then what you're going to find is you're going to be basically strengthening the weak length which is the front part of your leg the anterior tibialis and that's going to give you a lot of relief on the big toe and the last exercise would be where you're going to be inverting the ankles okay as well as everting the ankles so you're going to rock them back and forth while you're sitting in a chair okay you're going to work up to 30 times then when you get better with that you can do this standing so 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 now let's say for example you just have more inflammation in one big toe okay 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 okay on the mirror image side you're going to find it's very very tender but it's going to give you a tremendous amount of relief on the side that's actually hurting now 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 what you can do is start massaging with lotion on the inside space between the big toe and the second toe right where you have this little web between the two toes go down a little bit further towards the arch and you're going to find some areas that are very very tender in between the first toe and the second toe i would do that type of massage on both feet it will give you a tremendous amount of relief as you're correcting these bunions all right so now that you have the basic information the best video for you to watch next is my one on flat feet check it out i put it up right here

Channel: Dr. Eric Berg DC

Views: 2,209,434

Keywords: how to fix bunions, how to fix bunions in 3 steps, fix bunions, bunions, bunions relief, bunions remedy, remedy for bunions, bunions explained, bunions pain relief, bunions stretches, bunions exercise, bunion treatment, bunion pain, bunion splint, what is a bunion, what causes bunions, hallux valgus, best exercise for bunions, top causes of bunions, bunions instant relief, bunions dr berg, bunions massage, bunions on feet, dr. eric berg, eric berg, dr. berg, berg

Id: N9kdv-1Mias

Length: 9min 47sec (587 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 27 2022