What Is A Custom Biomechanical Arch Support™ (CBAS™)?
CBAS are supportive devices which are placed inside footwear to change the mechanical function and posture of the feet, knees, hips and back. They work dynamically during weight-bearing activities such as walking, running and standing. Ideally, they should provide full, custom and corrected arch contact so that the foot works in a biomechanically correct way. To date, only the Foot Solutions Custom Biomechanical Arch Supports offer full-arch contact and accommodative support calibrated for your weight and foot type. The reason is simple. CBAS are more difficult to produce because they must change the way your foot works and be comfortable at the same time. Many other supports are either simply cushioned pads or give a small, inadequate arch support lacking individual customization to your foot. They may feel comfortable, but by failing to actually correct faulty foot mechanics, will not prevent the painful deformities or syndromes that much of the population commonly suffer from.
What Are Faulty Foot Mechanics?
The foot is designed to unlock, or pronate, when it hits the ground for shock absorption and to conform to variable terrain. It must then re-stiffen (lock), or supinate, for efficient leverage as the body is propelled forward onto the next step. When either of these phases are excessive or out-of-synch, the foot has a faulty mechanical function. Ninety percent or more of the population over-pronate; their arches flatten too much (flat feet) and do not re-stiffen enough for efficient propulsion. Approximately four percent of people over-supinate, meaning their arch structure is high and rigid. In this instance, the problem is poor shock absorption and weight-bearing pressure is concentrated in only a few spots. CBAS are designed to help correct both pronation as well as supination.
What Kinds Of Problems Result From Faulty Foot Mechanics?
- Pain and deformities in the feet
- Bunions, heel pain/plantar fasciitis, calluses and hammertoes
- Pain in ankles, knees, hips and back
- Arthritis of the joints, especially the big toe
- Poor posture and balance problems
Can Problems Be Prevented Or Corrected With The Use Of CBAS?
Yes. If the problem is caught early enough, pain and deformity can often be prevented. Regular use of these unique supports can often reverse deformity development or, at least, prevent surgery. How? Because when you restore normal foot function, your body receives what it needs to heal itself. A typical arch support only masks your symptoms temporarily, until further deformity eventually worsens your condition. Any other necessary treatments or therapies are more effective and last longer when healthy foot function is restored.
How Long Will It Take For My Symptoms To Go Away After Using CBAS?
That will depend on the following: How advanced the condition, flexibility of the deformity (if one is present), your age and general health. For most people, significant relief is experienced within weeks of regular use. At most, it may take a few months.
Your Foot Solutions fitting professional can address more questions specific to your needs.
Why CBAS?
The Arch Support Quandary
Medical professionals face a daunting array of choices with respect to arch supports for their patients, many of whom clearly need a successful, long-term solution to their progressively collapsing foot posture. Unfortunately, the entire arch support industry is rife with anecdotal or opinionated rules-of-thumb that do little to make rational sense of a reliable process for evaluating and prescribing the right device for a given foot type. Moreover, the clear majority of studies that have tried to show an added benefit from custom vs. prefabricated arch supports, have failed to do so. The mainstream theories and methods, dominant since the 1970s, have not inspired confidence in the medical community.
Identifying A Good Arch Support
If the problem is to restore a normal-functioning foot posture, there are a few significant criteria that must be met. First, arch supports must capture the properly corrected position of the foot, with the arch as high as the foot can make with the heel and forefoot flat on the ground.
Second, in order to affect the foot, a device must be in direct contact with it. In spite of this obvious fact, most typical custom arch supports avoid contact with the arch in a corrected position. Instead, the arch support is made with variably inclined wedges, usually under the heel and sometimes the forefoot. Because in school many professionals were taught that this will therapeutically re-balance the foot. But if the arch is still collapsing, this theory proves meaningless.
Third, the amount of direct arch support needed by any particular person is a custom property of the device. Forget the debate about whether a support should be rigid or flexible in general. A person of a certain weight, foot structure and activity level needs a custom amount of flex for normal pronation and comfort, and enough rigidity to elevate the arch to achieve functional re-supination at push-off. CBAS engineers discovered that the full-contact arch support design was also quite effective for high-arched, rigid feet because it redistributes foot pressure evenly across the entire sole of the foot. For the first time, people with these more unusual foot problems now have a custom arch support solution!
CBAS™ New Technology
The real question: What is the best way to hold the arches up, correct the way our feet work, and fight the effects of body weight, gravity and concrete? That is how one can appreciate the difference between a Foot Solutions Custom Biomechanical Arch Support™ and a typical custom arch support. CBAS were designed similar to how an engineer would design the construction of a bridge, looking at the real forces involved and how best to manage them. The CBAS design is based on a completely new model of correction called MASS, an acronym for Maximum Arch Subtalar Stabilization. This is the optimal supination a foot can obtain with the heel and forefoot flush to the floor. In this position, the foot can successfully resist over-pronation on heel strike and achieve full re-supination at push off. A new casting method captures this position reliably every time, without the ‘artistry’ and guesswork typical of slipper casting. With the floor as a frame of reference, the foot is taken through a series of impressions based on the normal gait-loading pattern. The procedure is identical for all feet, but the result is a custom version of the MASS position based on individual anatomy.
Our lab then creates a custom supportive shell matching the individual foot to exact precision. The shell is machine calibrated to a custom rigidity allowing both enough flex for adequate pronation and comfort, and enough rigidity to ensure functional arch support. No other lab does this.
CBAS Calibration: The arch support is placed in the test chamber with a reference pin pointing to a standardized location under the arch shell. An air bladder is then inflated to apply an even blanket of pressure across the insert. The amount of downward deflection of the reference pin is measured digitally, and a calibration result number is displayed to the Arch Support Calibrator to determine proper shell flexibility.
