r/LegLengthDiscrepancy

My LLD is 1.2 cm and I'm on my feet a lot for work, so I rotate through a couple pairs of sneakers during the week. For reference, I work with kids in a clinic/daycare. I'm slowly starting to get outer sole lifts in all my shoes and would rather add them to brand new shoes than ones that are on their last leg. So, what sneakers have you had luck in adding an outer sole lift? I like trendy, sportstyle sneakers (New Balance 2002r, Asics Gel) but the outer soles on that type tend to make it difficult to add a lift. I'd appreciate any recommendations!

So I was reading you only correct about 70% of your structural LLD. I have been 6mm and definitely need more now. I am in orthotics with 5mm and then plan to get 8mm on the shoe. Hopefully ready by Saturday. My LLD is 18mm so 70% of that would be 12.6 so it would be a total of 13mm. I was curious though since it’s the same price should I get 10mm on the shoe for a total of 15mm I just don’t want it to be to much or to little should I stick to the 8mm. My foot doctor said anywhere from 8-10mm. I know your body to adjust but for the sake of cost I’m just curious if anyone has had success with wearing 70% of your LLD?

Are there any adults here who’ve had leg lengthening surgery? I’m late 50’s and wondering if it’s even an option for somebody my age.

I grew up in the ‘70’s/‘80’s. Hit a growth spurt as a kid and my left leg didn’t grow as much as my right. My parents saw me limping and took me to the doctor. He told them there wasn’t anything wrong with me—I just had a short leg. Small, hick town doctor. If he knew about any kind of surgery, I don’t think he told us. His “fix” was a built up shoe—just what a 12 year old wants to hear. LOL So that meant one pair of school shoes every year. And then teen years I’d get a pair of work boots for summer. When I stopped growing the difference ended up being 2 1/2”.

I‘ve lived with a short leg this long, part of me says just deal with it. Part of me really wants two even legs. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but I’m still a little self conscious. I feel like folks see the build up before they look me in the eyes.

So is surgery even an option for an almost 60 year old? How long would it take? How long would I have to be off my feet and off work? Would insurance cover it or is it considered cosmetic? My insurance does not cover my boots/shoes. It is considered cosmetic.

I would appreciate hearing from older adults who’ve had the surgery.

Before I was 7, adults would ask me why I walked like a vampire. Always on my toes, never my heels. My parents tried to force me to walk normally — heel first — but it never worked. Nobody could figure out why until someone sat me down, pulled both my legs straight, and held them together.

My left leg was shorter. Noticeably shorter.

Nobody in my family had seen this before. Nobody knew what to do about it. And honestly, I was scared of what finding out might mean — so I avoided the issue entirely. For years.

I also have a hereditary condition called Multiple Hereditary Exostoses — extra bony growths that develop throughout the body. The largest one was on my right shoulder, at least 3-4cm in diameter, eventually removed. I've always wondered whether the excess bone growth somewhere contributed to the leg length difference. I still don't have a clear answer.

18 years old — National Service

When I enlisted for mandatory national service in Singapore, the medical checks picked up my gait. I was sent to a podiatrist who prescribed custom insoles and told me to get high-cut shoes. When I inserted the insoles the fit was so tight it hurt my feet. I stopped wearing them after a few tries.

So I kept walking on my toes. And the backaches continued.

30 years old — the comment that changed things

My boss noticed the way I walked and said something I wasn't expecting: "Why don't you see a podiatrist? If you don't fix this now you'll regret it when you're older."

It hit me hard. I had become so accustomed to the discomfort that I had stopped noticing it. I had normalised something that was slowly accumulating consequences in my body.

So I went to see a different podiatrist. This time they did 3D pressure mapping of my feet — a scan that showed exactly how I was loading each foot. The leg length difference came out at 1.5 inches, 3.8cm. He recommended shoes with more interior space to accommodate the insoles.

A few months earlier I had bought a pair of Nike Air Force 1 Remax — thicker sole than standard, more room inside. I didn't know it at the time but I had accidentally bought the right shoes.

When the custom insoles finally arrived and I put them in, I wrapped plastic bags around my shoes and walked around my house so I wouldn't get them dirty. I didn't want to take them off. For the first time in my life I knew what it felt like to walk with both feet level on the ground. It felt like I had a brand new pair of legs.

The flexibility problem I didn't expect

With the gait issue seemingly solved, I turned my attention to everything that had tightened up over 30 years of compensated movement. My hamstrings were chronically tight. I couldn't sit cross-legged on the floor. My left ankle could rest on my opposite knee but my right couldn't get anywhere close. My entire lower body felt locked.

I started yoga. It was humbling. My body was so stiff I struggled with almost every pose. My favourite positions were child's pose and savasana — the ones where I could just stop trying. When I asked instructors about my specific restrictions I mostly got generic advice that didn't seem to account for why my body was asymmetric in the first place.

The insoles stopped working — and then I made it worse

About a year in, my foot had changed enough that the insoles lost their effectiveness. I had a second pair made, but couldn't find the same Air Force 1s — that edition was discontinued. The new shoes didn't fit the same way. The insoles were uncomfortable and expensive to remake annually.

So I tried DIYing it with a half heel lift instead.

It gave my left heel some height, but all the pressure shifted to my toes. I was still tip-toeing, just with a prop underneath. After a while I developed aches on the left side of my upper back. I stopped using it. I stopped using any corrective footwear at all.

What I didn't understand then — and only pieced together much later — was that changing something at my foot had created a consequence in my mid-back, and nobody connected those two things. Not me, not any practitioner I saw.

Physios and chiros — effective, but not enough

I went through a series of physios and chiropractors. They were genuinely effective at relieving symptoms but not the cause.`

In my personal experience, I started to feel like I needed to understand my own body more deeply than any single session could give me. I couldn't expect someone else to care more about my body than I did. I had to put in the work myself.

That realisation sent me to two books that genuinely changed how I thought about pain and movement:

The Ultimate Guide to Self-Treatment for Joint Pain by Christopher Kidawski — and Becoming a Supple Leopard by Kelly Starrett.

I was surprised to discover how much relief a single lacrosse ball could give me. And I started to understand for the first time that where I felt pain was almost never where the problem was actually coming from.

That's where Part 2 begins.

If any of this sounds familiar — I'd genuinely love to hear your story.

Specifically: did your compensation pattern become its own problem, separate from the discrepancy itself? Did fixing the structural issue (lifts, orthotics) not fully resolve the movement restrictions that had built up around it?

I'm not a physio or movement coach. Just someone who went looking and found the rabbit hole goes deeper than I expected.