Bunion Treatment
to Avoid Surgery
If you are like most people, you want to try every possible option of non-surgical bunion treatment before resorting to an operation on your foot. When you have a foot bunion that is causing you pain whenever you put on a pair of shoes, you want to know what kinds of treatment are available that you can do yourself to make that pain go away or at least reduce it significantly.
Because of the stories you’ve likely heard about having surgery on your feet, you are naturally leery of going through that yourself. If at all possible, you want a non-surgical bunion treatment that you can deal with in the privacy of your own home and at your own pace, and definitely one that does not involve foot surgery – even if the surgery is supposed to be a quick, out-patient procedure.
Studies indicate that most surgeries for bunions are successful, but everybody seems to know somebody or has heard of someone for whom that isn’t exactly the case. A number of these unlucky people who had the surgery even say they are worse off after the bunionectomy operation than they were before.
Every surgery has risks, and bunion foot surgery is no different. However, we are totally dependent on our feet for walking, so if surgery on our foot doesn’t go exactly as expected, we end up hobbling around on crutches for perhaps several months, or we have to constantly deal with pain and swelling that just doesn’t seem to go away. The recovery period for foot surgery can end up lasting much longer than expected, if you aren’t really careful in the first few weeks after your operation.
Non-Invasive Bunion Treatments
So, back to our question…what is the best non-surgical bunion treatment? Anyone asking this question has probably already tried things like toe separators, bunion guards, and hopefully is wearing the best shoes for bunion relief. Or you may have tried something like a toe straightener. But if these efforts have not provided the pain relief you need, then the next thing to do is try a bunion splint.
Bunion splints come in two main types. A bunion regulator or night splint is designed to worn only when you are totally off your feet for an extended period of time, as you are when sleeping at night in bed. These are relatively simple and inexpensive bunion braces.
On the other hand, a bunion day splint is designed with to be worn inside your shoes while you are walking. Naturally, you can wear it at night, as well. A day splint includes a hinge as part of its design, so it is a more sophisticated orthotic device than a night splint. Even though a hinged splint doesn’t sound too comfortable, many people who have worn them report being surprised at how easy they are to get used to.
Excellent hinged bunion splints designed and manufactured in Germany are on the market, and have provided serious pain relief for many people.
Bunion splints of either type provide the best non-surgical treatment for bunions because they are designed to do more than just provide pain relief. The job of splints is to actually straighten your big toe. (For more information about bunion surgery from John Hopkins, click here.) Of course, a splint worn during the day and also at night will result the quickest correction of your big toe. Another thing to consider is that during the night if you have to get up to go to the bathroom, a night splint would need to be removed unless you could reach for a pair of crutches.
However, a day splint with a hinge worn at night would enable you to walk to the bathroom without any problem. So, even though the hinged splints are more expensive and perhaps require a little more getting used to, they certainly are more convenient. When you consider that they offer the quickest way to correct the position of your big toe, you can see the advantage to this kind of splint over the more simple one. But it may very well be that a night splint will work perfectly fine for you, as it has for many people. You may want to just try the night splint first, and then if you need faster relief, switch to the hinged day splint.
Whichever one you choose as you seek to avoid foot surgery, rest assured that these splints, which work to actually correct the position of the big toe, offer the best non-surgical bunion treatment available today.