Do you know you can lace your shoes to help fit orthoses/ unusual foot shapes ect

[bluecar15]

If you do then ignore this but I wish I'd been told this when first given orthoses. Thanks to a high instep, many shoes already didn't fit me properly/where uncomfortable on the bones of my instep so when I was prescribed custom orthoses for collapsing arches thanks to me eds, I found the increased height they gave my feet mean that pretty much no shoe fitted me and any that did where really tight at the top while still slipping at the heel. I asked for advice from the therapist fitting them and was pretty much told there was nothing they could do and I could wear them or not wear them. Anyway I later found out you can thread your laces in different ways for different feet! If you cross them they'll be tighter or if you just thread them at the sides they are looser so now I leave a gap in the middle at the bottom of my foot at only cross them at the top.

There's a image here that explains what I mean tho I can't speak for how well it addresses these particular concerns, just that I saw a similar diagram and worked out the best way for me by making certain bits tighter and some looser. external-content.duckduckgo...

[Trickysite]

I have lymphodaema as well as EDS so my feet swell up and down. Thanks so much! Very useful.

[Emaych61]

I so sympathise with you on this. I’m now reduced to wondering how long it’s going to be before I have to pay to get shoes specially made because finding shoes to fit my feet has become nigh on impossible.

Like you I have high arches and was first fitted with orthotic devices around fourteen years ago when getting out of bed in the morning sometimes resulted in pain in my feet that felt as though I was treading of shards of broken glass. The problem was put down to metatarsalgia. At that time I had not received a diagnosis of Hypermobility syndrome (or Hypermobility Spectrum disorder as it seems to be known as now). Finding shoes to fit me has never been easy - even as a child: high arches, pronating ankles, narrow heels but extremely wide and flat across the front of the foot. I do have boots for hiking (or even walking on uneven ground - we live in a very rural area) but after years of ending up crippled with pain from boots that did not fit me properly I ended up at Altberg Boots in Richmond, Yorkshire. There I had the first proper assessment/measurement of my feet for boots (it turned out that one of my feet was off even their scale for wide feet). They also introduced me to the idea that there are different ways of tying laces which can help.

Thanks for your post raising this issue. It’s a useful one to consider.

[Blearyeyed]

Thanks so much for the advice and the link , I am spreading it around my EDS friends whom have these foot problems as we speak , and I've saved the post to try the different lacing options in the future when I need to. Take care and I hope that you are getting more comfort when you walk now , Bee

[Arkenstone]

Thank you so much for this. Quite amazing.