“Flat feet are typically caused by a bone inside the foot that is hypermobile and comes out of alignment. It’s called the talus bone. If you use the analogy of a stone bridge, you have stones that come up to the center of the bridge, and you pluck out that middle stone, then the bridge collapses. Well, essentially, in the foot, the talus bone, which is inside the ankle joint, acts like that stone bridge and that center stone. Typically what happens with a flat foot is that the talus bone migrates forward on ambulation. So when a person steps down and puts their full weight, the talus moves forward, which then causes the mid-foot to unlock. Then you have a flat foot. Now, we do have treatments for this condition. Typically you want to treat a flat foot because if you don’t, there can be issues with ankle pain, with knee pain, hip pain, and back pain. Because you can imagine if your base is out of alignment, then the rest of your joints can become out of alignment. Our thought is that this can cause arthritis at a premature age and various kinds of joint pains up the extremity, up the kinetic chain.”
Make an appointment with Thomas Goldman, DPM
Thomas Goldman, DPM, is a board-certified podiatrist at Mount Sinai Doctors, seeing patients Monday-Friday Trained in New York, he is certified by the American Board of Podiatric Medicine. He was awarded his medical degree from the New York College of Podiatric Medicine and completed his residency in Podiatry at Coney Island Hospital. He has a particular interest in podiatric minimally invasive foot surgery and sports medicine.