Will Yoga Help My Bunion?

When you have a bunion, you're sometimes so desperate to avoid pain, you'll try anything. Over-the-counter

remedies, medications, and herbal remedies, anything that will make that bunion stop hurting. Sometimes these remedies will help relieve the symptoms and pain, but they will not stop the progression of the bunion.
Some patients will ask if exercise will help their bunion, and while there are several types that will, most exercise will aggravate your bunion. For all yogies out there, good news! Yoga is one type of exercise that will help alleviate the symptoms of bunion pain.
Yoga instructor Jennifer LaRue Huget was asked by a client if yoga would reverse the progression of her bunion. The client had heard that by putting the affected foot up against a slanted wall or board and stretching out the other leg, you could stop bunions from forming.
Huget looked up in her favorite health book, Yoga as Medicine by Timothy McCall, but couldn't find the answer she was looking for. So she called McCall, editor of Yoga Journal, and asked him. He had never heard of the pose her client was talking about, but had heard of a pose that may help spread out the toes and metatarsals (Stand with feet side by side, a few inches apart and step the affected foot forward. Sickle your foot inward and rotate the heel inward and lower it down.).
McCall had heard of a woman whose bunion stopped progressing after she practiced a certain yoga move, but he couldn't remember which move it was. But, he acknowledged that bunions are a bone problem, and likely wouldn't be healed by yoga.
Yes, bunions are a bone problem with little that can be done to stop its progression. Patients who wear high heels or tight shoes can slow progression by switching to other shoes, and orthotics are often found to be helpful, but bunions are a mechanical problem with the bone.
"Once bones become altered, that wouldn't be very easy to change," says McCall, even with yoga and strength building exercises. "Spreading the toes and metatarsals, creating space, perhaps could undo some of the damage" done by wearing too tight shoes.
McCall feels that "People want to apply yoga in a quick-fix way. But to help with most chronic conditions, you need to establish a pattern of regular practice over the long term. If you have a bunion and you do yoga almost every day for the next several years, you will certainly feel better. But I don't think your bunion will be fixed."
Dr. Rock Positano, a nonsurgical foot specialist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in NYC, agrees. "When you develop a bunion, the big toe is not functioning as well as it should. So other parts of the foot, like muscles, tendons, and ligaments, have to take up that slack. Yoga gives more strength and flexibility to the area around the bunion and takes some of the stress off the big toe, making the foot work more efficiently. Anything that gives the foot more stability and more flexibility is good for a bunion deformity because it allows the other parts of the foot to pick up the slack for what the big toe is not doing."
I would have to agree as well. When starting a yoga regimen, I would not go in expecting that your bunion is going to be cured- the progression will reverse and it will disappear. The only way a bunion can be "reversed" is through surgery. Your pain, discomfort, and symptoms however, may be alleviated and you may be able to go longer before having surgery.
Reference: Washington Post and Allure.
If you have a foot deformity, call our Glastonbury or Middletown office to make an appointment.
Ayman M. Latif, DPM
Connecticut Foot Care Centers
Foot Deformity Doctor in CT
Podiatrist in Glastonbury and Middletown, CT
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