Hi Dougcalv,

Certainly if you sustain an injury or have a problem with a joint in your foot, it can create some other, compensatory, changes in the rest of your body, including in your back/gluteals and possibly in your neck.

A few questions:

a.) How do you know you have arthritis in that joint? Did you have an X-ray? Or is it just stiff and sore? How old are you?

b.) How much activity do you do? What are your main problems? The foot? The back? The neck? You mentioned that your QL and GMed were tight, how do you know and do they cause you pain or are they just tight?

c.) What are your goals out of going to physio? What exactly is the problem?

I honestly cannot say definitively that a physio is going to help you, just as you could not ask an oncologist if they are going to get rid of your cancer for you. But I can tell you that you're probably going to get a more definitive answer if you go in for a proper assessment. Really it all depends on what your problems are, which can only be done when we look at you as a whole and in person.

Asking a physio to try and diagnose a problem like this is much like asking a doctor to tell you what infection you have without being able to see the blood results. Bloody difficult! What I can tell you is that physios are trained to look at biomechanics, and the movement of the body parts in relation to the whole. Obviously I am biased, but I would be putting your money on a physio before a doctor or chiropractor.