Many women who enter menopause experience foot pain. This is often due to changes in hormones that weaken your ligaments, flattening your arches and increasing your risk for plantar fasciitis. Menopausal changes can also dry out your skin, leaving you at higher risk for cracked heels. Clearly, seeking podiatric care can help reduce your risk for all of these complications. But here's one more reason why you should treat menopause and sore feet: unchecked foot pain can increase your risk for pelvic floor dysfunction. How...and why? Here's what you need to know.
Can Menopause Cause Pain in Your Feet?
Yes, both directly and indirectly, often due to many of the hormonal changes in your body. You see, many of the changes in your hormones that occur after you enter menopause (defined as not having a menstrual period for one full year) can impact your foot health. Decreased collagen production can hurt your feet because, with less collagen in your skin, it loses elasticity as well as resilience. That can make it harder for your body to heal from an injury, and it can also increase your risk for joint pain. Increased ligament damage is also quite common in post-menopausal women. And even the erosion of your feet's natural fat padding due to aging can contribute to sore feet after menopause.
What is the Connection Between the Pelvic Floor and the Feet?
There are many connections between these two crucial body parts. When your feet over or under pronate, your body's alignment can be affected, putting extra pressure on the muscles in your pelvic floor. Additionally, when your feet aren't functioning optimally, they may not effectively absorb shock as you move through your day. This puts additional pressure on your pelvic floor and the rest of your body.
Menopause, Sore Feet and Pelvic Floor Health ![Woman holding her sore foot]()
Menopause increases your risk for foot pain in a variety of ways, as reviewed above. But as it turns out, unaddressed foot pain in women can lead to pelvic floor dysfunction at any age. And here's why: fascial lines that run through your body create a direct connection between your feet and your pelvis. As such, dysfunction in one area can lead to problems in the other. In fact, estimates suggest that 30% of women with untreated foot pain also experience pelvic floor dysfunction. So, for that reason, focusing on women's foot health becomes even more important once you have entered menopause.
Specific Connections and Areas of Concern
After menopause, weakened ligaments can increase your risk for developing flat feet. In turn, your pelvic floor health could be directly impacted as your hips and feet rotate inward, increasing tension in the pelvis. Moreover, if foot pain changes your gait, your pelvic floor health could also be impacted. And that's because getting out of biomechanical alignment at the base of your body can negatively affect all of the other structures relying on your feet for proper support.
Helping Yourself
How can you prevent menopause from impacting your foot and pelvic floor health? Start in your shoe closet, making sure you are wearing supportive footwear with plenty of padding. If you have custom orthotics, you should wear them as instructed in order to optimize your body's biomechanics. And if you don't yet have these customized, medical-grade shoe inserts, now is a great time to discuss this and other treatment options with our podiatrist in Houston, Dr. Andrew Schneider.
How Your Podiatrist Can Address Menopause and Sore Feet
When you come into our Houston podiatry practice with foot pain, we will always take a look at your gait. This can help us detect biomechanical challenges that could contribute to your discomfort, and that can be corrected with custom orthotics. We can also treat conditions such as plantar fasciitis that are more common after you have entered menopause. If you have lost some of your feet's natural padding, we can explore fat pad restoration to help improve their shock absorption, reducing the impact on your pelvic floor in the process. If you've developed bunions or hammertoes, we can provide a range of treatment options, from non-invasive all the way to surgical procedures. And suppose your foot pain is generalized and has not responded well to other treatment options. In that case, we can explore the power of regenerative medicine with procedures such as Shockwave Therapy and PRP injections.
We know that menopause can be a trying time in life. But this period of change does not have to translate into foot pain, or increased pressure and stress on your pelvic floor muscles. Want to take control of your foot health? We're here to help. Simply call the office at 713-785-7881 or follow this link to request an appointment.
