Name: Dr. Paulette Hugulet, DC, LLC
Address: USA

July 02, 2013

Gait. How’s yours? Do you walk like you just got off a boat? A little tipsy?

Well, back issues or foot issues may be the problem. Your La Grande chiropractor can diagnose the problem!

A thorough chiropractic examination would disclose gait problems due to foot conditions or back pain conditions or muscle degeneration due to back pain. Dr. Paulette Hugulet, DC, LLC schedules plenty of time for a thorough chiropractic examination!

After finding the diagnosis from the examination findings, your La Grande chiropractor will set a chiropractic treatment plan and likely a rehabilitation plan to recapture your strength and balance of gait.

But you want to know why you have an odd gait. A new paper just came out implicating disc injury as a cause of gait deviation. When a spinal disc is injured, chemicals are created that irritate and produced changes in the gait of the experimental rats. Their strides were shorter and their stances were longer. (1) Crazy!

Radiculopathy (leg pain that radiates down the leg along a specific dermatome) is coupled with more severe and extensive weakening of the low back multifidus muscle. (2) This situation may influence one’s gait and call on the skills of your La Grande chiropractor to help you, too! The multifidus muscles need strengthening to keep you balanced.

Then, a mechanical foot condition may cause or aggravate your back pain. Your chiropractor has inspected studies that link flat feet, ankle instability, sagittal plane blockage and excessive pronation to lower back pain. Specifically, excessive pronation has been shown to cause leg length differences which lead to abnormal pelvic tilts and lower back pain. Based on these results, ankle and foot deviations can be considered a potential cause for lower back pain due to the disruption of the kinetic chain from the foot to the back. We chiropractors consider the foot and ankle when addressing lower back pain, especially if more conventional causes of disease fail to describe the condition. (3)

So whether it’s your back or back muscles or your feet causing you gait issues, Dr. Paulette Hugulet, DC, LLC is here to get to the bottom of your gait issue and back on track! A combination of chiropractic treatment (especially with our Cox Technic spinal manipulation) and proprioception exercise can help.