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How’s Your Foundation?

Image of feet crossed

Have you thought about your foundation lately?

You walk. You run. You wear shoes that don’t fit, but sure look great. Your feet are exhausted at the end of the day, but you figure that’s normal. Our poor feet-we expect them to get us from Point A to Point B, but we rarely consider the beating they take from carrying us around.

Enabling Your Movement

Our feet are complex structures that contain over 100 muscles, tendons and ligaments. One-fourth of your body’s bones, 52 in total, are contained in your two feet! Paying attention to how they’re feeling and taking proper care of them is vital to your health. Serious health complications can develop by ignoring your feet and not giving them the care they deserve.

Preventing Future Problems

Foot health is about much more than the pain they might be feeling. Conditions such as plantar fasciitis and stress fractures can develop if you neglect the structure of your feet. So, what can you do?

  • Wear appropriate shoes – think function over style here – better yet let your feet breath and move around without shoes whenever possible e.g. at home or in the office, and let them use all the muscles they have without the constraint of a shoe-like ‘cast’
  • Stand or walk on natural surfaces (e.g. grass or dirt rather than concrete or paving slabs)
  • Schedule an appointment to talk to us about your feet, we have the latest GaitScan and Applied Functional Sciences Technology to assess how you are actually transferring your load during your gait cycle

Improvements to your footwear can include wearing orthotics or other arch support. These may better absorb the shock your feet take and allow your feet to respond more naturally when walking on unnatural surfaces that have no ‘give’. Don’t however think you have to automatically jump into orthotics to fix a problem, we often find we can release structures in your feet or higher up the kinematic chain to help get you stronger without the need for in-shoe devices.

Are Your Feet to Blame?

Similar to the cracks in the wall or windows that don’t open and close easily due to a settling house’s foundation, many of your spinal problems may get their start from a poor foundation (feet). Bring it up on your next visit with us and we would be happy to discuss what you might do to help your feet carry you around better.

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