Foot orthoses are traditionally used to take care of a variety of biomechanical ailments of the feet and leg. These foot orthoses are inserts that are worn in the footwear in an attempt to change positioning of the foot in such a way that they help disorders in the foot and leg. These problems vary from, for example, plantar fasciitis in the heel to medial stress syndrome that can happen in the legs of athletes. All the research evidence shows that the clinical results with foot inserts are usually good and most people that have foot orthotics are satisfied with them. However, foot supports are only ever be worthwhile if you in fact wear them. You do need to have correct shoes to use them in and use them enough for the disorder they were recommended for to resolve.
Among the issues with foot orthoses is that you simply need to use them in footwear. This may be a issue if you don't like using shoes or live in a hot climate in which the using of shoes is difficult. In these environments people like using jandals (known as ‘thongs’ in Australia) which you can not really wear with a foot supports. There are numerous options that you can get. Among those is to limit the time that you are not wearing the foot orthoses, so that you wear footwear with the foot orthotics enough and do not wear the sandals too much so that the painful condition does not occur. Another choice is by using such things as the arch support sandals or jandals such as the Archie Thongs from Australia. These have some arch support built into them and may typically be used instead of foot orthoses. Footwear much like the Archies will often not be as effective as a properly made foot supports, however they could be more than sufficient to supplement them and use when the proper shoes can't or will not be used.