No, I already wore what I considered 'sensible' comfortable shoes (mostly Hotter) quite a lot of the time although a size smaller than I should have been wearing. I could never understand how the advice to have a space between the front of your toes and the front of your shoes was supposed to work, as my shoe-shaped feet just slid forward into the gap. In fact the flat shoes that broke my feet, I realise now, did it by being slip-ons half a size bigger than I was used to with a slightly narrower toe - walking up and down hilly streets on holiday basically just kept ramming my toes forward into the narrow toe. My first instinct to fix it was actually good - I stuffed cotton wool between my toes to keep them spread out - but when I got back a chiropractor and everything I read on the Internet recommended Orthotics. I dont know if Correct Toes were around then, but i certainly didnt come across them, unfortunately. The scholl orthotics tilted my foot so that my big toe didn't really take any weight - I wore them in my normal shoes and they stopped the pain and the bend in my joint didn't get any worse. But I couldn't go without them for a couple of days without the pain started again.