Re: Re: hypotonia: exercises for low toned feet

[Guest guest]

Hi,

My son has global hypotonia and when he was about 10, his ankles began to

pronate inwards. Basicly my son has duck feet.... very flat-footed.... and

guess what.... so do I and just about everyone in my family! But I live with

the flat feet without issue; my son, however, is another story.

Here is how we built up his feet and stopped those ankles from pronating

inwards. Note that he still has flat feet but his ability to support himself is

now very good.

Bare footed, have the child stand behind a chair that they can use to grab for

balance if necessary (but not to lean on). The child slowly raises upwards onto

the toes, hold and then go back down to the floor. Again, rise slowly up onto

the toes, hold and then release. Do this exercise for 2 minutes at a time,

twice daily...... forever! It takes a long time to build up ankle and foot

tone. I do this exercise too and believe me, after 2 minutes, us flat-footed

folk can really feel the 'burn' of muscle development. We probably did this

exercise for 3 to 6 months for Mark and his ankles stopped pronating inwards and

despite the 'flatness', his feet look pretty good now.

While orthotics help us to walk better, they don't address the underlying core

issue and that is a lack of muscle development or tone in the ankle or foot.

So, basicly you would need to wear orthotics 'forever' but if you can build up

the tone of the muscle over time, then you won't need orthotics or braces

because the foot will be able to then support itself.

Our kids hypotonia gets better and improves with hard, hard work. They need to

work their bodies ten times as hard as others to receive much less muscle mass.

Now muscle tone and muscle itself are two separate monkeys. But if we develop

muscle mass, the body will then be able to develop tone with increased work and

exercise to the sensory motor cortex. Without the muscle mass, this cannot

happen. So, all along in recovering Mark, we have established muscle mass first

and then the muscle tone generally follows.

Right now we are working with the chin up bar and doing chin ups to build up his

cortical grasp and his shoulders and upper arms. The rest of his body (his face

is still a tad weak and I feel we could work it just a little more for better

results to speech....) now has normal muscle tone. This did not happen

overnight but with work that specifically focuses on the area of the body you

want to build.... it eventually comes. Anyway, Mark started with just 'hanging'

from the bar. After a little while, he was able to do one chin-up. Now he is

up to 4 chin ups and seems to be 'stuck' on trying to get to 5 chin-ups. It's

like his body just doesn't want to build any more muscle in that area and he has

been at a standstill here for a couple of weeks. But because he has fun doing

it, he will persist and eventually, he will get his 5 chin-ups and later on, I

hope to report that he can do 10!!! When he can do this, I will be satisfied

with his upper body strength. When that comes in, many things will be easier

for him; fine motor skills, especially.

For my boy, we needed to work tone on every aspect of his face to get good

speech: jaw, tongue, lips, throat, airflow.

We needed to work his body core (used a medicine ball doing squats and lifts a

couple of times daily for 3 minutes at a time): this enabled him to be more

stable as he sat, as he walked and it also stopped this perpetual neck 'lull'

that he seemed to have. It was like his frail body was unable to support his

neck. This went away when we worked his core body muscles.

So.... that's my little ditty on hypotonia. It's a real struggle and takes a

long time, but with good vitamins (don't forget to take carnitine along with

your EFAs since carnitine helps to transport fatty acids to the mitochondria)

and good 'body work', it eventually comes in. You want to give up sometimes

because it takes so long to develop a segment of muscles but don't because when

you do get those muscles to come in and then work on the tone itself, the

child's global function dramatically improves.

Take care and I hope to have given you some insight as to what we have done to

alleviate that nasty hypotonia.

Janice

Mother of Mark, 14

[childrensapraxiane t] hypotonia

>

> My daughter was dx with hypotonia of the small muscles in her feet

> today. It is affecting her fast walking/running gait. No other

> hypotonia, no other gross motor issues, no fine motor issues yet. The

> PT recommended orthodic braces. Anyone else have an apraxic child with

> hypotonia of the feet? I have heard of hypotonia of the truck/core

> muscles as it relates to apraxia. But of the feet only?

>

> Thanks.

>

>