Your feet are your body’s foundation, bearing all of its weight and keeping it stable. Any pain, deformity, or discomfort in your feet can compromise that stability and cause you to alter your foot alignment and/or normal gait, which in turn can lead to excessive stress on everything from your hip joints to your spine. When this happens, you may be tempted to solve your foot problems by picking up over-the-counter insoles. While that can certainly be cheap and easy to do, insoles and inserts from the supermarket or drugstore lack nearly every benefit that custom orthotics can deliver.