Have Your Leg Lengths Checked – Are They Equal?
If your leg lengths are not equal, it can cause shearing stress to your low back. Think of a 3-legged bar stool with one of the legs 1″ shorter than the other two– the seat will be wobbly (unstable).
You will need a house mate to check your leg lengths. Lie down on the floor (not a bed or sofa), making your body straight as possible. Loosen up your muscles, and shake your legs a little to remove any muscle guarding, then rest them, keeping your feet close together.
Now, have your house mate stand at your feet and take a picture of your feet with the camera pointing straight down over your feet. Look at your heels: do they form a straight line? Below is what it looks like when heels do not line up (this person is in the prone position, however).
If your heels do not line up, the heel that is closer to your head is called the “apparent short leg.” In the image above, the RIGHT leg is the short leg. It appears short because your pelvis could be high on one side from a previous trauma and be pulling up the leg with it. Another possibility is that your postural muscles on that side are abnormally contracting, pulling up your leg when you lie down. The actual length of the leg– femur, tibia and foot– is usually not physically shorter in length than the other, which is why it’s called an “apparent” short leg. A possible exception to this is if you had a hip or leg bone injury that did cause the leg to be anatomically shorter than the other one, but this is rare in most people.
When you stand, that short leg acts like the short bar stool leg and causes your pelvis to twist. The spine then automatically bends to get you standing upright (imagine a tree sapling growing on a slope that bends perpendicular to the Earth, not the slope). This can cause strain to your low back.
If you have a short leg, you can try using a heel lift in the shoe of the short leg. Another option is to buy a pair of gel insoles, and use just one of them for the short leg.
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