7 Keys to Your Foot Health

Total body health includes taking care of you feet too!

If you think your feet are not important… THINK AGAIN! Feet need care and health too.

Many groups remind us of the importance of our feet and why we need to pay attention to this vital part of the body that helps us get around by walking, running , jumping and much more! Feet can be a mirror to our general health and there are many conditions that could affect our feet including bone anomalies, structural alignments issues, problems with gait, flat feet, corns, calluses, skin thickness and others.

Other statistics we should know about feet include the fact that 75% of Americans will be experiencing problems with their feet at least one time during their lives. Such statistics could be similar to many other parts of the world too. For certain health concerns such as diabetes, foot care becomes even more critical and there should be sufficient attention paid to foot health to prevent drastic outcomes.

For everyone, taking care of your feet is a no-brainer and something we SHOULD all be doing! Other problems that people develop can also be traced back to problems with their feet.

Do you know that in your lifetime, if you compare the amount of walking you’ve done, you’d have walked around the world… and not just once, but up to five times! This is about 115,000 miles during a person’s lifetime. HENCE, let’s consider 7 keys to foot health. Yes, sign me up TOO in terms of learning these important keys to keeping my feet in GREAT shape. The MORE we all know about our foot health, the better-off we’ll ALL be.

1. Know Your Feet

First, we need to know our feet!

We NEED to understand the type of feet we have. For example, do you have flat feet?

Have you have had foot problems in the past?

When a child is born, he or she has flat feet because the foot of an infant is still developing. However, for some adults, this condition may persist and create occasions for clumsiness or tiredness when using the feet for prolongs periods of time. If you do not have a fully developed foot arch, you’d NEED shoes that provide arch support. You can create excessive strains and pressure on your feet when you increase certain activities. THUS you do need to BEWARE of this!  Knowing more about your feet and how you could affect ligaments such as the plantar fascia ligament around the heel area could help you avoid foot problems.

 

2. Buying the Right Shoes

Another key for successful foot health is to buy the right shoes. Once you identify what your feet need, consider  buying shoes that provide the RIGHT fit for your feet. Your feet can expand and contrast based on the time of the day.
At the end of the day, feet tend to be at their largest size . Hence, when attempting to buy shoes that fit properly, you may want to consider this too and not buy shoes in the morning!

Certain types of shoes can also create foot conditions that I’m sure you’d rather do without. An example is bunions which is quite prevalent in women who wear pointy shoes. The abnormal pressure that the WRONG shoes place on the feet gives rise to painful spots on the feet too. There are 26 bones and at lots of joints in the human foot and you want to ensure that you find shoes that give your feet room to breathe and move. When shoes do not fit properly, this can cause about 80% of the problems people have with their feet.

3. Love the Low Heels!

Are you a high-heeled shoe fan?

If yes, you may want to embrace a low-heeled shoe life-style instead. Look at your feet in its NATURAL state. It sits low  on the ground. This lowness and lack of stretching as seen with high-heeled shoes minimizes the risk of harming the metatarsal bones. If high-heeled shoes must be used, it is recommended that no more than 2 inches high is attempted.

Nevertheless, if you are using low shoes, you are doing your feet a favor and contributing immensely to your FOOT HEALTH! Bunions are also common in high-heeled shoe wearers because of the pressure exerted on the feet. Apart from bunions, high-heeled or poorly fitting shoes can also create a deformity known as hammer toe in which a toe is bent due to shoes that just do not fit properly. With the wrong shoes, a person could also suffer from metatarsalgia, which is a pain in the ball of the foot.