subject: The Apos footwear will improve your osteoarthritis right away [print this page] The Apos footwear will improve your osteoarthritis right away
The APOS system, invented by APOS Medical and Sports Technologies Ltd. of Herzliya, Israel, can "significantly improve pain and function in clients with knee osteoarthritis - sometimes instantly," relating to an announcement by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons , after results from a double blind analyze were released at the society's 2007 yearly meeting poster presentations. The device's Advantages likely come from its design and style that reduces flat surface walking.
It looks like a toy but it dont.
Produced over eight years by Drs. Amit Mor and Avi Elbaz (from the Assaf Harofe clinical Center in Tel-Aviv), the APOS shoe has been clinically proven to both increase the patient's gait and alleviate the pain in the knee and other leg joints...
"Basically the way joint rehabilitation has been carried out over the last 50 years or so hasn't changed," Mor described. "The most essential problem is functional rehabilitation - the simulation of life and environment. For instance, what do you want an hurt person to be able to return to do? To be able to go out and walk in the grocery store. But what current rehabilitation strategies have been doing is showing them how to stand in the hospital. We wanted to be able to replicate real life."
Mor explained that for the first few thousand years of man's living, there wasn't a problem with neuro-muscular control - individuals walked in sand, mud, natural platforms that went up and down in natural inclines and declines, causing people to use all their muscles equally.
"Now, with Adidas, Crocs, Nikes, and all the man made flat surfaces made of parquet or carpet, everything is level, and each and every step we take is no different from the last 1000 steps, or the next million steps. Additionally, we all sit close to a computer where we work in unnatural settings - the result is osteoarthritis, back pain," said Mor.
"Our aim was to replicate the way mammals rehabilitated in nature and evolution but we planned to keep it simple. We wanted to connect the hemispheres under the hind and fore foot," he added, clearing up that a hemisphere creates multi-directional instability and has been the general training for tens of years in simulating instability for patients.
The result is the APOS shoes that involves the use of semispherical, individually calibrated bio-mechanical units that are placed on the soles of the shoes at the hindfoot and forefoot. These units can turn medially, laterally, backward and forward, and may be individually adjusted in order to balance loads.
The Apos individually calibrated shoes provide dynamic wedging, and can significantly cut down pain and boost function in patients with knee osteoarthritis. The footwear can enable people to walk easily during real-life physical activity, thus reacquiring neuromuscular skills and balance.
