Are You Told You Have Unequal Leg Lengths?

By John Degenhart, DC

In my 44 years of full-time, busy loving practice, many people will say to me that they were told by other professionals that one of their legs is longer than the other. Let’s be detectives, let’s look into this deeper. Many years ago, my polio patients wore long 2”-3” built on lifts to the outside of their heels, because the polio affected one side of their body. Or as a child, if you broke a leg near the ends of the bones, by your ankle or knee the epiphyseal growth plates are stunted and that broken leg will end up shorter if your broke that leg before puberty. So except for these rare cases, here is what most of you are told about your unequal leg length.

A medical doctor will prescribe orthotics, maybe 1/3” to 1/2” to go inside the shoe on the short leg side. This heel lift makes the shoes level but the leg

Or this patient may see a physical therapist. They tell me, “PT told me I had a shorter leg, so they laid me on my back on their therapy table and they yanked and pulled on my short leg. But my back pain never got better.”

So then what do these patients do? Most of them just give up, and they live in pain, thinking there are no other options. But there is. The reason I write these articles, do a local TV show, and will never retire, is because I need to get this message out that they need to see the right chiropractor.

Not every chiropractor checks the leg length and just cracks both sides of their spine. That patient ends the way they started. Try to envision this scene. A husband and wife came in. he tells me he has an unequal leg length, it wasn’t always there, but after he fell off an 8’ ladder and landed in the shrubs. I ask the wife to take a video with her phone. I asked him to take out the heel lift. He is reluctant, he has had it in all his shoes for years, but he does. I do my exam, the wife is filming, we see that his left leg is ½” shorter without the heel lift. I use my specialized drop piece table, make a gentle adjustment to the left sacroiliac joint. I redo my exam and the legs are level! The wife gasps in amazement. I tell him to throw away the lifts, and in one month he came back. His pain in his back of 20 years is gone, his legs are level.

I have thrown away 100 lifts over the years with my patients. But also given out about 5 who broke a leg as a child. I know people have doubts in chiropractors. I used to myself. But if you have back and knee pain, have a lift in your shoe and was told you have unequal leg length, come to my office for a proper adjustment. Bring your phone and a loved one to video the legs getting level. It will change your life! The legs were never unequal, the hinge joint that they connect to was out of alignment. Fix the hinge joint and the legs are level.