How is the CMT Foot different from the average foot?
I know many people ask me how my feet differ from everyone else’s and they often ask this because they never see my feet. I tend to always have socks on my feet because they are so chilly. Most Charcot Marie Tooth feet are what doctor’s call a Pes Cavus foot. Before I took medical terminology in college I did not actually know what this meant. All I knew what I have a Pes Cavus foot. Isn’t that awesome? It told me a lot… NOT.
Now, I was so excited to find this picture because it is going to show you a lot of what I am talking about. As you can see the long bone in the arch that the big toe is attached to drops down drastically which the average foot does not have. This bone placement is what causes the high arch of the foot. You can see the difference in the second image that depicts the average foot. You can see that there is a drastic change in the arch and toes as well as tendons of the foot.
Now that we have looked at and talked about that I want to point out how little of the foot actually touches the floor. One day I want to get some paint and make my foot print on a piece of paper to show you just how little of my foot touches the ground and causes much of the balance problems that I have because of the CMT. You can kind of see how little touches. The foot will touch down on the heel, toe base, and along a thin line on the outside of the foot. In addition to this “hammer toes” is very common among CMT patients where the toes curl and only the tips of the toes touch the ground.
A great way to show you what this feels like is to take your hand and put all of your fingertips onto the tabletop in front of you. Your fingernails should be touching or almost touching the table and you now put weight down on them and you can get an idea of the kind of pain that comes with standing on toes like that all of the time
