I Don't Have a Foot Fetish

New patients in our office sometimes think I have a thing about feet.  I'm always looking at their feet.  The truth is that as I hold their feet I'm comparing the length of their legs.  The relative length of the legs is a very reliable indicator of how the body is functioning.  I use the comprehensive system developed by Activator Methods.

The procedure begins by determining the functional short leg.  A functional short leg is a leg that appears to be shorter than the other one because of muscle imbalance which pull it up.  This is different than an anatomical short leg in which the bones of one leg are actually shorter than in the other leg, usually due to disease or trauma. 

Once the functional short leg is found a specific adjustment is applied to the pelvis to balance the leg length.  After the pelvis is corrected, various joints of the spine and extremities are stressed to see how the functional short leg reacts.  If the leg again shortens, it indicates that the stressed area is subluxated and also how an adjustment needs to be applied to make the best correction.  For a person who has not observed functional short leg checking, this may seem a bit strange.  However,  Activator Methods has 17 published research papers demonstrating the accuracy and reliability of this procedure.  The method has been accepted by independent panels on standards of practice as one of the most accurate assessment methods in the chiropractic profession.


Patients can think what they like when I'm looking at their feet.  The alignment of those feet mean a lot to me!