Thread: Boots & bunions advice

(this is probably half a tech talk and half a gimp central so i'm opting for the more visible forum to post this in)

i have a bunion on my left foot base of big toe, becoming very evident over the christmas break after skiing almost every day. i'm having my bootfitter blow out my boot shell in the area, but is there anything else i can do? padding it? liner modifications? will i be able to continue to ski with it or will i require surgery to remove it at some point? it seems that the pressure from skiing may just cause it to continue to grow.

also is there anything i can do to reduce it? i've been taking ibuprophen and icing it after skiing (and regularly in the evenings after work) but it just stops the pain. is there anything a doc can do other than surgery? wondering if a trip to a podiatrist is worth the time.

thanks for any advice

you do not want surgery.several friends,women, had trouble even walking afterwards for many months.are you sure its actually a bunion with bony changes or something more superficial in the soft tissue?

Work with your bootfitter. It may take several modifications over time to get the boot right, so that it doesn't pressure your bunion. Consider a custom orthotic, which can lessen pronation. Doing so can keep the foot narrower and lessen the pressure of rolling onto the bunion.

Ask Bunion....he should know, that's his heritage. Heck, that might even be his cousins that are on your foot.

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Do you use a good footbed? Bunions usually develop over time as a function of over pronation. In the ski boot obviously there can be pressure but that often isn't too bad until you add movement/rubbing to the pressure. This is often movement from over pronating within the boot. Controlling that movement can do a lot to help and also a lot to keep it from getting worse.

I'm sure many won't believe this and slam it but find a good bootfitter or podiatrist and talk to them.

Find a foot specialist. My brother has two, he had one removed, and he was perfect by the next winter. If you are to do it, end of the winter/early spring is a great time to.

If you dont get rid of them in the long run, your shoes may hate you because they will wear out super quickly.

Have you had it xrayed yet? I thought I had a bunion but it turned out to be a ganglion cyst. I had it removed, and now, 2.5 years later, my foot is still a mess. If it's a cyst, have it aspirated, not removed. Trust me on this. PM if you want details.

went to the shop tonight. round one of punching out the shell did nothing for me. i couldn't notice a thing. they're going to do round two tomorrow. sadly, won't be ready until late saturday, so i'll be on my old boots, which i need to test out.

i had custom $300 orthotics years ago and switched to SOLEs after they wore out. i've been using SOLESs for about 5 years now, give or take, in all my shoes and ski boots.

it feels hard, not like tissue, but it does seem to give some now that i can press on it without too much pain. i guess only a doc and an xray can tell for sure.

here's my grody feet. you can see the knot on the left foot.

Jebus, that's nothing. The scar tissue from my surgery is at least twice as big as that. I'd just put two bunion pads on it to ease the pressure in ski boots.

yeah maybe the angle is bad coz it goes up more than out. i've been padding it up but at the end of a day of skiing it hurts like hell. i hope it's just not getting a little worse each time i ski on it. but i'm encouraged by your post, perhaps a cyst would be a preferable diagnosis.

I assume you're skiing alpine, not tele? I would think that a good fitter could make that toe (and the whole foot) imobile, eliminating stresses on the joint. You might want to try putting something between your big toe and the second toe to force the big toe outward, straightening it a bit. I had to do this in my cycling shoes, or I got lots of irritation in the tendons under the ball of my foot.

Also, if it's a cyst, it's not necessarily good news. From what I've read on the always-accurate and trustworthy interwebz, a cyst can form from fluid leaking from the joint. Under stress, this fluid gets forced into the cyst, so draining it is temporary. I had mine removed, and it is now growing back in a different (and much worse) spot.

Thats not bad at all. A little work done on that should fix it. Have them look at your liners as well

If you are sure the punch is adequate (in the right spot, roughly the same contour as the bunion/spur) try stretching the liner and/or heating compressing it if a stock liner; if a thermo liner try taping foam over the spot on your foot and re-cooking it.

I have a bunion twice that size at least. Should be very easy to punch out a space for it (which is what I did). Also, it's possible that you have too much space in your boot so you are moving your forefoot too much and banging the bunion. A good fitter should be able to manage this.

thats not a bunion.the big toe would be much more angled laterally.

Not a bad bunion! Small in the land of foot problems. You'll figure it out. It may take a while to get the boots dialed in, but that'll happen.

Echoing what others have said
- that's not a big bunion
- get a good custom orthotic. It will be pricey but very worth it in the long run.
Both my bunions used to make yours look like a zit but after several years wearing proper orthotics, they have diminished substantially and so have my pronation issues and knee problems both in and out of ski boots

Time for a trip to the docs, let them tell you who you need to see to get that fixed up.

Curious to know where you are at in dealing with the problem? Any progress?

i should pick up my boots today after a 2nd punch-out for the bunion area. the first round didn't give any noticeable results. i skied on my old boots with their packed out liners and bunion pads (x2) last weekend and had no problems with the bun. i haven't got a doc appt yet, been too busy with work. i'll post up again after new info.

got my boots back. they feel much nicer! he punched it out more and put a little foam spacer with the bunion cut-out on the outside of my liner. this firms up the liner around the outside of the bunion and gave it a little more room.

Good news--hope to hear how they ski.

well, my bunion saga continues. i scheduled my bunion surgery today. the problem has been more on the pinky toes than the big toes since having the boots punched out.

the scary part is that 1/3 of patients have no pain after 3-4 months, 1/3 have no pain after 6 months, and 1/3 takes a year (or more). which will i fall into?

anyone got any alternatives to surgery to try? i've got a couple of months before i get chopped.

A ridged orthotic and a foam liner, maybe even a stiffer shell.

I look at all bootfitting problems as originating from two basic problem areas, or a combination of both.

1. The shape of the foot does not match the shape of the boot/footwear (uneven pressure).
2. Movement inside the shell combined with uneven pressure.
3. Both

Q- What brand and model boot are you using?

You appear to have low volume/narrow feet (not easy to see from above?). Your midfoot width is not much narrower than the ball of foot width (most are). If you have stretched the boots overall width, and punched the specific area correctly, then you must still have some form of rotational or forward and aft movement in the shell that is causing the problem. The fact that it is only happening on one foot may be because of a small leg length difference (nothing to worry about it's very common).

A foam liner will stop the movement problem and will distribute the pressure from the shell more evenly around a larger area of the forefoot.

Make sure you wear good supportive shoes everyday and have some insoles/orthotics in those also. Good traditional support running shoes with some type of better arch support are the best for good feet health when not skiing.

If you take care of your feet that small bunion will not continue to grow. Once it has had a chance to rest (now that the season is over) the sensitivity should go down.

I really don't think you need surgery on that bunion. Just get better fitting custom boots. Yes, they are expensive but once you have been through what you are going through (pain/lost ski time) you will understand why so many other people spend so much money on their ski boots. There is a reason so many foam boots with orthotics have been made the last 30 years!

Also, take care of your feet better when not skiing.

Looking closer at the photo of your feet, you have some type of rotational movement of the first ray (1st and 2ed toes). If you look at your second toe nail area you will see that the nail does not go all the way to the lateral edge of that toe. It's as if that second toe is rotating inward just a bit and the fat pad under is coming up on the outside (little toe side). I have looked at a lot of feet over the years that is not normal. Not may feet are normal.

Forefoot Valgus (?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyxhAYrixSo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffLPIa6gGEk

The switch to a pre molded arc support (SOLE) may have over corrected your foot. Just a guess I'm not a doctor. The function of the foot when walking gets complicated fast. There is not much medical knowledge of exactly how this relates to skiing footwear. But some of us old bootfitters have been doing this a long time and have a good guess about what is causing the problems inside ski boots.

Ridged custom orthotics (*molded in the correct neutral position) and foam liners make many problems go away.