Saturday 12th October
One Step At A Time: Tips to keep your feet supporting you
One-quarter of all the bones in the human body are in your feet. Each foot comprises 26 bones, 33 joints, a network of more than 100 muscles, tendons, and ligaments, and over 7000 nerve endings. Your feet also affect the way that you move the rest of your body. Poor foot mobility and control cause a torsion movement up the lower limb to the thigh, all the way up to the lower back. So, when your feet aren’t healthy, strong, and moving well, the whole body suffers.
A person weighs more when walking than when standing. There is around 30% more force and weight loading onto the feet when walking compared to when standing still. The average person walks about 115,000 miles in their lifetime – more than four times the circumference of the globe, so you really put your feet through their paces!
Just as you look after the rest of your body with a good diet, exercise, and chiropractic, your feet deserve to be looked after, too, so they can continue to support you.
Top Tips For Your Toes
Poorly fitting shoes are the cause of many foot problems and disfunction. We spend much of our day in socks that limit our toe movement and shoes that squash the natural shape of our feet and have hard flat soles, and you walk on hard concrete.
When buying new shoes, you should make sure they are long enough to avoid squashing the toes, wide enough to avoid squashing the sides of the feet, and deep enough in the toe area to prevent the shoe restricting your toes and feet. Whether it’s heels or pointy work shoes, you should always do your best to ensure that your feet are not being crammed into them.
Shopaholics and shoe addicts, take note! Science says that to keep your feet happy, you will also want to make sure that you have enough pairs of shoes to rotate your footwear. Frequently varying your heel height will also help you to use your feet differently, and prevent any poor habits from being formed is also helpful in supporting your foot health. You are welcome!
Just as you stretch after exercise to keep your muscles healthy, after a day of running around, especially after wearing shoes designed to look good instead of feel good, it is important that you practice some foot love by stretching your calves, mobilizing your ankles, and feet.
Create a stretching and mobilizing routine, for example:
Rotating your ankles in both directions
Stretching your calves
Using spikey balls, tennis balls, or even a golf ball to roll under your feet, up and down and side to side
Give yourself a foot massage (or flutter your eyelashes effectively enough, and you might persuade your loving partner to give you one instead!)
Spreading the toes helps to elongate the muscles and can help improve foot alignment. It can also help to decompress the foot after a long day of being restricted in shoes.
Your toes are responsible for so much more than carrying nail polish. Your toes are designed to provide posture and balance and propel you forward during the active gait phase (walking). All of your toes are important. However, the most important of the little piggies are the big toe and the pinky toe. They are both equally crucial in helping you maintain your balance. Unfortunately, they are also the toes most often crushed by ill-fitting shoes (and menaced by the Big Bad Wolf).
Feet, while not the most popular of topics, carry you for the entirety of your life…look after them, and they will look after you.
