Bunions, Neuromas, & Other Foot Funk

What if your bunion isn’t the problem, but the solution your brain came up with?

In this episode of Three Questions, I dig into the surprising ways your feet reflect (and influence) everything from hip mobility to spinal stability. Whether you’ve been told to blame your genetics, your shoes, or just “getting older,” I invite you to ask a different set of questions.

I unpack how sensory input shapes foot function, why certain areas of your foot hurt more than others, and how small changes in awareness can create massive shifts in how you move.  You’ll hear practical ways to assess what your feet are doing when your hips move (and vice versa), why it’s worth challenging the usual narratives about shoes and genetics, and how being a “sneaky mover” could be the real root of recurring pain.

If you’re a movement professional, a curious client, or someone who’s tired of foot pain dictating your workouts (and your shoe choices), this episode offers a fresh and functional perspective.

Resources mentioned:
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Chapters

• 0:00 Bunions, Neuromas, & Other Foot Funk
• 0:00 Final Tips
• 1:55 Three Key Questions for Foot Health
• 2:36 Addressing Foot Pain and Sensory Input
• 6:31 Exercises for Foot and Hip Stability
• 14:16 Genetics, Shoes, and Foot Mobility
• 19:43 Sneaky Movers and Hypermobility

Transcript

Meghann Koppele Duffy: Welcome to Three Questions where critical thinking is king, and my research and opinions are only here to support your learning and hopefully deeper understanding. Hey, my name is Meghann and I am your host of Three Questions, and I'm really honored you clicked on today's episode to discuss bunions, neuromas and other unexplainable foot funkiness.

Now, it was interesting. Uh, maybe it was last month. I was out on the West coast in California seeing a bunch of clients. Now it just so happened the average age of the clients I was seeing that week were around like 68. I'm not gonna say an older clientele, but they were clearly older than I am. And what was super interesting, a lot of them came in with back pain or shoulder pain or balance of dizziness issues.

But was even more interesting was that every single one of them either had a bunion, big toe side or a neuroma at around the fourth toe. Now, I am not gonna go into a deep explanation about what these things are. I wanna ask you three questions to help guide you on what you could can be doing differently to either prevent a bunion, a neuroma. Or maybe you already have one, and this can kind of help guide you on next steps. Now, there is no debate that the feet are connected to our body. Yes. I mean, hopefully. But what's interesting about the feet is oftentimes we can get very laser focused on the foot problem. And when we see a bunion, we say, ah, there's a mobility issue in the foot.

Yes. And what's going on in the rest of the body. So today's three questions are going to be the following question. One, what are your feet doing when you move your hip joint? And vice versa. What are your hips doing when you move your feet? Question two, are you blaming genetics or your shoes? And question three, are you a sneaky mover or hypermobile?

As I believe these three questions are gonna really help guide you on what's next? Where should I start? What should I do? Or are my feet a lost cause? Now let me address the last one first. No, you're not a lost cause. I don't care how bad your bunion is. We can work with that. Can I fix your bunion per se?

No. I'm not in the business of fixing people. I'm in the business of helping your brain and body work as a unit. Okay. One of my clients was a former dancer and Rockette, and had a major spinal injury in a car accident. The first thing I did when I met her was when we were doing footwork on Pilates. I just touched her bunion.

And when I touched her bunion, her whole body shifted in a positive way. Why? Because where your bunion is, where the calluses are. The thickest on your feet or your neuroma think that is the, uh, can I say that's the fold point? Now I know the foot doesn't fold. It spirals. It's got a lot. There's a lot of joints in there.

But think that's the joint that's moving the most. That's where your foot is trying to get sensory information, and that's where your foot likes sensory information. Why is that bunion searching for the goddamn floor? Well, it wants sensory information and it's gonna get it somehow. And if your foot, ankle, knee, hip, shoulder can't help with that spiral, oh's gonna get there itself.

Okay. Same thing with I see a neuroma, people with neuromas. I, I'll never forget my husband, oh, he cracks me up so much. We went for a walk and he's like, oh man, I got a rock in my shoe. And I'm like, all right, well get the rock outta your shoe. Then he is like, ah, damn. I still have the rock in the shoe.

And I'm thinking, oh shit. He has an neuroma. And what I'm thinking is, you need to be patient. You need to listen and you need to not be a bitch, Meghann. Now why I said that to myself is no, I'm not very patient with my husband. When we're doing exercises, if I talk to clients the way I talk to him when we're doing exercise, I wouldn't have a job.

Okay? One time I actually said to him, people pay a lot of money to hear what I'm saying about their movement. And he goes, well, go talk to them. And it pissed me off, but it made me laugh at the same time. Now, why I am not so patient with him is we learn very different, number one. Okay, I'm going to do a whole episode on learning styles, so I'm not gonna get to that on this episode.

But he also asked me at 9:00 PM at night when we're like getting into bed, I finally sit down on the couch to work on his foot. I not the time to ask, but that's a whole nother conversation. So let's get back to what I mean about the fold points. Okay. So if the foot is searching for sensory input, the foot needs sensory input.

Okay. It's gotta connect with the ground. So there has been some theories about hey pad, if you have a bunion under your big toe pad under the fourth toe, fourth and fifth, to help that foot spiral more. And I did that with clients for a while and it worked sort of. But what I do now, I'm gonna tell you a little trick.

I actually put the padding under the bunion so it almost elevates the foot more. And you might be thinking you are putting them in their bad alignment. Yes, I am. Stop judging me. I get great results. And you're listening to my pod podcast. So if you don't like what I say, turn this shit off. I'm just teasing.

But why I do that is I'm creating slack in the foot. So anytime there's tension throughout the system. The brain's gonna automatically go to a, uh, this could be a red light situation. Also, that bunion is searching for sensory input. If we give it sensory input, maybe we can get that foot to stop spiraling at that place and let it spiral at a different place.

So let's go back to question one. What I want you to do in your next workout, do a hip exercise. Maybe it's open chain where you're just, your legs out, you're circling, you're lifting and lowering your leg. I want you to record yourself on your phone. I just want you to do the leg exercise, and I want you to go back and watch the video and notice what your foot is doing.

Is the joint angle changing? So if you're watching me on YouTube, you can see my arms out. If you're not, listen up. I've got my arm out and I've got a hair tie around my wrist. I'm just gonna move at my wrist, kind of down towards my thumb. Okay? So my wrist is now benched as if that was the ankle. Does your foot drop down?

When you move your hip? Does it move up or does it move constantly when you're moving your hip? What that is telling me is you cannot stabilize your foot in an open chain environment and isolate your hip. Now, this is critical because when we walk and we step through and take our foot off the ground, it's open chain.

We do have a shoe on normally. So the difference between a shoe and the floor is we can move the shoe. We can't change the floor. Okay? But what I do is I make open chain environments similar to closed chain meaning. So if a client is wearing a shoe. I would have you do that same hip exercise with a shoe on, and I would say, Hey, do you feel your foot moving around in your shoe?

And often they're like, yeah. Or Where do you feel your foot touching your shoe the most? And they'll say, I don't know my pinky toe. I'm like, all right. Maintain the pressure between your pinky toe in your shoe as you do the hip circle. So I gave them a specific sensory cue to keep the foot. In the same position in the shoe.

I'm hoping that sensory information helps stabilize the foot more, or I think of that game of operation. Don't let the foot wobble around within the shoe. Keep it in the same place. Okay, so your homework right now is notice what happens to your foot in open chain environment when you move your hip joint.

Also, check out a closed chain environment. Now the foot should kind of collapse a little bit. The foot needs to absorb weight. It shouldn't be stiff. Okay? We do want stiffness in the plantar facia. When we're in push-off, that's when we lift our heel. But let's not get into foot mechanics right now. Okay?

Let's just think what happens to your foot when you, maybe you're doing a leg press, or maybe you're doing a squat. Get out your camera. Don't look at your feet. Record your feet while you're doing your squat. Notice what they do. Do they roll out? Do they roll in? Now, I want you to pick one of those ranges.

If they roll out, go to where they roll out and see if you can go in the opposite direction. Say they roll out. When you go down, see if you can keep them rolled out. As you stand up, please understand I am not saying that it is wrong to move your foot and ankle ish. What I'm asking your brain to do is yo.

Can you straighten your damn knees and, and extend your hips without mobilizing that specific spot on your foot? Can we do it differently? My goal is I am trying to, based off that proprioception, based off that sensory cue. I want your ceal to get that unconscious prop proprioception. And say, based off this proprioceptive map, can I do this movement differently?

Can I change the motor map? Can I check for errors? Were I able, was I able to do that? Okay, so just those assessments are telling us right now, are your feet able to stabilize when you move just your hip? And can your hip stabilize when you're just. Oh, we didn't do that part yet. Hold on. In close and open chain.

I got ahead of myself. This is important because we want your brain to differentiate between the two. They're next to each other in the brain map, so I don't want you to always have to do something specific with your hips when you move your feet, and vice versa. Now, the other thing is when you're moving your foot, I mean sit right now, put your right foot on the ground, and I want you to just take your right hand, make an l.

Touch your, the top of your pelvis, like, you know, when we say hands on hips, touch the top of your pelvis with your thumb and reach your pointer finger to your femur bone on the right side. Just touch 'em. Don't do anything with that information. And I want you to roll your foot out to the side like you're just tilting your heel, like a sub taylor roll.

Does the distance between your fingers change? Can you do that again without the pressure or the distance between your fingers changing? So what I'm using my fingers is just proprioceptive information. I'm crossing the hip joint because I want to see is my hip mobilizing when I am trying to isolate a part of my foot.

Again, it is not wrong for your hip to move when your subtaler moves, but I need them to move independently so my brain knows how much mobility we actually have at the sub Taylor. And at the end of the day, guys, your foot hits the ground differently with every single step you take, right? Like nobody takes a fricking perfect step.

And if you think you're d you are, you're fooling yourself. I mean, but that's okay. I like your confidence in your gait. But what I wanna happen is no matter how your foot touches the ground, I want your hips and the rest of your body to respond appropriately. I'll never forget I was actually moving Pilates equipment into my new studio, this big guy.

He was like, you can lift that. I was like, yeah, it's one of my most proudest things. Um, impressed my father-in-law 'cause I could lift a whole toilet. You know? It's the little things in life. But anyway, I rolled my ankle so bad, I tripped over my dog's dog bed and my right ankle literally rolled and he's like, oh my God, are you okay?

I'm like, yeah, I'm fine. And he was like, that didn't hurt. I was like, no, I trained that shit. I train my foot in all weird positions. So yeah, I do Pilates footwork with my foot completely rolled to the side in a sprained ankle position. 'cause I want my hips and body to respond. I want my brain to know it's safe to move there.

So if that happens fast, I won't sprain my ankle. And please understand that I have, I call myself A-A-N-C-A-A-N-C body type. My husband is A-C-N-A., I am all ass, no calves. My husband is all calves. No ass. Which one are you? So for me, all those gluteal, I really propel myself forward with my glutes. Yeah. So because of that, I used to sprain my ankles a lot.

I have really small calves and legs, pretty thin legs for the size of my ass. Okay. It's a copman coppel thing. My dad's the same way. He, he doesn't have a big butt, but he would always sprain. He still always sprains his ankles. His foot looks like it's literally on backwards. It makes me crazy. I told my dad, do not tell people you're my dad.

I can't have you walking around with that foot. But he refuses to any, to do anything about it. So that's another story. But anyway, I train those things. So I'm looking at based off my foot position, can I maintain that position and move my hips? Vice versa. Can I maintain this position and move my foot?

That's your homework. I want you to do it, and then I want you to see what happens to your feet. When you move your arms, move your head. I want you to notice what happens to your feet, everything you're doing, okay? Which leads me to question two. Oh my God. Everybody loves to blame genetics. Well, my mother and my mother's mother and my mother's mother's mother all had bunions.

All right, now I'm gonna use my dad for an example. If there was 20 men lined up, you would know which one was my dad. Number one, we look alike, which don't you love? People are like, oh my God, you look just like your dad. I'm like, oh my God. I love when people tell me I look like a 73-year-old man. But I do.

Um, and my comeback, I worked for my dad for a short period of time and all the women were like, oh my God, you are just, you look just like your father. And I'm like, I know, but I shave. 'cause my dad always had a beard and a mustache, which they thought was hysterical. Anyway, yes, genetics play a part. I have wide hips.

When I was 14 and I finally got my period and hit puberty, um, my mom had to take in my jeans. Because I had so wide in the hips, but my legs were thin. And I said, mom, I hate my body. And she was like, why? You're Irish, you were born to make babies. And I was like, but I don't wanna make babies. And she wasn't like, insinuating, I need to make babies.

But she's like, look at me. Look at my sisters. And I hate to break it to you. Your dad's mother had big hips too Meghann, you doomed. Now, this was all before J-Lo and uh, Kim Kardashian was around. So in high school I was very self-conscious about my body. But anyway, yeah. So I've got genetics, I've got my dad's chicken legs.

I also have my dad's mannerisms because guess what, we mimic the people around. I walk, I talk, I move. Just like my dad, when we talk to you, we hit you in the arm. Why? Because we want you to pay attention. We got something funny to say. Listen up. It makes my husband crazy. I didn't realize I did it until I watched my dad do it.

And somebody said to me, Jesus Christ, don't sit next to Meghann unless you want a bruise on your arm. I had no idea I did it. So yeah, we do have genetics and they play a role, but I do foot to hip these specific exercises because based off my body and how I move through the world. I can change those because there's this thing called neuroplasticity.

I am never not gonna have wide hips or a big butt, but I, but pun intended, I can teach my glutes how to respond better. I can teach my feet how to respond to those glutes. I can reap my ankles in response and shoes. Yeah, you might have wore high yields or wore stiff shoes. Stop making excuses. I'm sorry. I know that that was really mean.

Make as many excuses as you want, and when you're ready to take it on, let me know. All right? Because trust me, I am the queen of complaining. Now, shoes are interesting. The shoes we choose to wear are actually the areas our feet like to mobilize the most. So women who like to wear high heels, you probably have a shit ton of mobility in your MTP, so that's where your toes, your phalanges meet your metatarsals.

I don't have a lot of range of motion there. I hate high heels and I have a very high arch, so my arch doesn't always reach the shoe, so it's uncomfortable. Okay, now something I realize when I play tennis, the sides of my feet always hurt. It's really hard for me to find tennis shoes that work for me. Why?

Because my foot mobilizes side to side a lot. But guess what's not mobilizing side to side a lot. My god damn hips. Okay, so when I play tennis, I do a real proper hip warmup. I make sure I pin my feet and force my hips to mobilize laterally because not that I'm mad that my feet over mobilize, but I, if my feet over mobilize, my hips don't have to mobilize as much, so I pin my feet and get my hips to activate so my brain knows it has another option.

I have these little drills while I'm playing tennis that I do on the court. I have one when I'm serving. I have one when I'm receiving. I have one when I'm up at the net. If I'm playing doubles. There's all different things that you would not really know what I was doing unless you knew what I was doing.

And if I don't do those, the side of my foot, my pinky toe kills me, kills me, and it really limited the type of shoe I could wear. So if shoes give you pain, I want you to hear this. That shoe is inhibiting the spot of your foot that your brain wants to move the most. So getting other shoes is going to be helpful, but it just exacerbates your prom.

'cause if the shoe is comfortable, it's allowing you to mobilize that section of your foot. I ain't mad at that. But use it. So whatever spot, whatever the shoe is limiting you, I want you to say, okay, can I move another part of my body without increasing the pressure at that spot? And let me tell you, if that shoe's hurting, you're gonna feel the pressure.

Can you move your foot away from that pressure spot and move your hips, move your arms, move your eyes, move something else without moving your foot? I'm telling you, it will change your life, but I'm telling you, it is not easy and you need to focus. Okay? And question number three, which brings everything together.

Are you a sneaky mover or hypermobile? Yeah, we all are. You don't have to be globally hypermobile or have EDS or HEDS to be a sneaky mover. Just like I told you, my feet are very sneaky. They mobilize excessively in two ranges of motion laterally at my tarsals. Okay. That's my midfoot. Only laterally not in a spiral.

Annoying. I know. And at my ankle I always laugh, ma and I, um, Mariska is my business partner at the neuro studio. If you did not know, we teach a course Pilates for neurological conditions and we used to do this drill in person where we would bring actual, like flippers for the feet and make pe make people walk in them.

'cause it kind of helped you understand what foot drop felt like. I. And Mariska goes to me, why are you walking so well in flippers? And I was like, oh my. Because this is how I walk. I literally am all ankle and I just slapped my foot down, done it since I was a kid. My husband is six, six to 85 ish. I don't know.

I am, what am I? Five, three and a half, probably 1 38, 1 40. I sound like I'm 400 pounds and I'm walking around the house. You cannot hear him. He's so goddamn light as a feather, it's terrifying. That big dude sneaks up on me and scares the shit out of me. He's so damn quiet. Anyway. We often joke Mariska who has MS and Significant foot drop, has more foot mobility than I do, but my sneaky mobility there inhibits me from finding mobility elsewhere in my foot, yes, but also up the chain in a huge way.

So where you are a sneaky mover, we need to bring sensory information to those spots. That brings me, remember question in question one. We talked about padding your actual bunion or neuroma. Get like a small Dr. Scholl's pad. Start small. People don't go big or just touch it. Let the foot, instead of forcing the foot spiral, let it go to where it actually feels good.

Support that bunion. See what happens. Give those areas that we over mobilize in a sneaky way. Sensory input. Don't say shit. Just see how the body responds. Then we can work from there. Also, bad news friends, you could be over mobilizing your spine. Or if you have scoliosis, your spine could really be affect, really affect how your four quadrants, your shoulder joints, your shoulder girdle, and your hips move, which is going to globally affect your feet.

Uh, the episode right before this was about scoliosis. So if you've got some spinal deviations or any spinal funk, go back and listen to that episode. I think it'd be very helpful even if you don't have scoliosis. Again, how do we bring sensory awareness to the spine? Uh, guys not with huge things like foam rollers and spine fitters and stuff like that because it doesn't just touch your spine, it touches the soft tissue.

Start using your hands kinesio tape, right? Right now. Touch your lumbar spine and move your body around. Tuck your tail. Arch it. Shift side to side. See which part of your spine feels like it's leading the movement, and notice what part of your spine is following or being dragged along. Think the spot that's leading the movement.

See if you can figure out how to bring sensory awareness, because I guarantee when you're moving your feet, when you're moving your limbs, that spot is mobilizing more than you want. And we need our spine to stabilize when we are moving our limbs in a big way. Now there's gonna be mobility in our spine in the gate cycle, okay?

However, we don't want you just to mobilize from one goddamn segment. I swear to God, I can do everything from L one. And C seven. Okay, so oftentimes, Oop, sorry, sound guy. I just hit the microphone. Hopefully he could get rid of that. Thank you, Joe. And if he couldn't, sorry to your ears that I just hit the microphone sometimes what I like to do is touch the spots that move the most, the ones that are the bumpiest, and try to move the others.

So what if we all just touch C seven, that's the big one at the bottom of your neck. Can you nod your chin without C seven moving? A, A, a, a, A. Maybe touch your lower back slouch. Notice where kind of the apex of the movement is, which one moved the most. Now try to flex your lumbar spine without moving that segment, just bring in some awareness to the area.

If we have no awareness, that lights up our brain. And awareness is not telling someone they're doing something wrong and them saying, okay. No. If you have to tell somebody they're doing something wrong, they have no awareness, they're doing it. I know that's hard to hear. If we have to repeatedly tell someone they're doing something like shoulders down, shoulders up, shoulders, left, head right, there's no awareness.

It's our job to bring some awareness there in a smaller, big way to help their body in, um, take all that information in, process the motor output differently, and hopefully be able to create a neuroplastic change via repetition based off that awareness. Okay, so today's episode. Remember, it's not about giving you solutions what you need.

It's you asking yourself questions. Which of these three questions resonated the most? So question one, do your feet move all the time when you're trying to isolate your hips? Is there anything you can do about it? How can you bring awareness to the feet? To get them to not change joint angle. Doesn't mean that the foot can't move through space.

I just wanna be clear, but we wanna take specific joint angles and not get them to change. I've even been so bold to take a piece of kinesio tape between, um, medial malleoli on a client and their bunion and made them do something and said, if the kinesio tape comes off, you know what? You moved. They moved in that spiral.

That's get making the bunion worse. Is it frustrating to them? Yeah. We have some good laughs. Is it always helpful? No, but it gets them curious. Okay. Also, what are your hips doing? When you're moving your feet? Can you isolate your feet, do some cool foot movement without losing what I call joint centration or reflex of stability at the hip?

We need that foot isolation. But also notice what happens when your client's moving the feet at the hips and also look up the chain. Do they shift their spine? Do they look around? It's all information. Question two, are you blaming your genetics or shoes? I get it. We all want a reason why things are happening.

There's no reason why things are happening. There's a million reasons why things are happening. But what are we, what can we control? Let's control the controllable. I can't control my genetics. Okay, I got 'em. But I can control what I do with those genetics. I can control bringing awareness to the areas of my body.

Then I'm a sneaky little B-I-T-C-H and move too much, which brings us to question three, so that my body can execute the movement without that sneaky movement. My hypermobile. People who are listening, whether it's global hypermobility or a certain area, I'm sorry. It sucks when you only feel excessive movement in a big way, right?

If you only feel your head moving when it's at end range, that's really challenging. So I'm gonna give you guys a quick tip. Three quick tips. Number one, go listen to episode one about hypermobility. Tip two, listen to my second me e episode about hypermobility. See how I plug my own podcast there? But three, which is most important, is maybe go to that end range.

So this way at least your brain knows where that join or position is in space. And keep your body head, arm leg there while you move other parts. So I say to clients, you wanna go there? Let's play. Let your head go over there now. Stay there. So say your head always shifts to the right. Well touch your head, touch your shoulder, keep it over there, and try to move your hips over there.

Yeah. The alignment police might come after you, but who the hell cares? You are able to differentiate your hip or whatever part of your body you did. You just gave your brain excellent information. Now that your brain knows you can differentiate that hip, hopefully it won't have to shear the head so much.

And also when you are hypermobile, you are sometimes a little deaf to proprioception, proprioceptive information. I keep kicking the microphone today. I'm really excited about this episode. And what I mean, deaf to proprioception is not that you can't hear, you don't sense or feel those proprioceptive shifts.

It's the same as somebody being deaf, they can't hear. So instead of beating a dead horse with the proprioceptive stuff, build awareness between head position and eye position. That might give your brain more information. Okay, I'm gonna do a whole episode on just peripheral vision, which really activates cranial nerve three because it is such a great tool to use to change your proprioception.

Okay, so today's episode. A lot of little nuances, a lot of things for you guys to think about and think. Don't make big changes. Make small changes. Your brain doesn't like a lot of changes at once. One little thing. So if you do nothing else, pin your feet, get your hips to move, isolate those hips, isolate those feet every day, seated, standing, sideline, upside down and backwards.

It will help a bunion or an neuroma not to occur. Or if it's occurring, it's gonna give your brain other options. And what I did not talk about, I just realized the neuroma, if your foot isn't spiraling to get the bunion down, you tend to over mobilize around that fourth toe. Sometimes it's the third and fourth and fourth.

So again, yes, don't put the bunion under the big toe put. The pad underneath that neuroma is small so that your foot doesn't collapse into that area. Give that a try. If it makes it worse, what that's telling us is your brain has no other options, so you gotta go back to question one. Okay, I wanted to give you guys just a little bit of solutions there because when you're in foot pain, it really fricking sucks.

So I hope you enjoy today's episodes. If you have any questions, please let me know. I love questions about the feet and uh, I hope you guys have a great day. Thanks everyone.