Your feet are a marvelous creation. Heed your built in warning system to keep them from going over the edge this New Year.
So what is this early warning system? Our feet let us know when they are approaching danger. So often patients ask why all of a sudden they are developing foot pain. Most of the time they don’t have severe foot deformities and are inclined to ignore their pain. The truth is that your foot can take a lot of abuse, but when you accumulate too much stress, you may push it over the edge and begin to develop chronic foot pain.
So what causes the pain if you haven’t had an injury? The way I like to explain this, is to compare it to your hands. Our fingers have to move all the time and as long as we move them within a certain range, we don’t have pain. However, our feet must bear all our weight as the joints move. You have to add to this the amount of time you are on your feet during the day including when you exercise. As long as our weight is evenly distributed throughout the foot as we move forward, and we work our joints within a certain range, our feet are happy.
However, if you add too much weight, have muscles of the lower leg that are too tight, overdo certain activities, have too low or too high an arch, or wear shoes that aren’t appropriate for the activity you are doing, you may activate your early warning system and develop pain. This is telling you to STOP! What a great system we have . We just need to heed the signals when we’re reaching the edge, and stop the activity.
With this New Year, review your checklist. Make sure your shoes are in good shape, and you are wearing the right shoe for the right activity. If you begin to develop discomfort, use Rest, Ice, Elevation, Compression, Stretching. Adding inserts such as Superfeet or Powerstep can also be very helpful.
If you’ve tried the above, and your computerized foot is still sending out a distress signal, pay attention to it, and have a professional evaluate your feet. Don’t let your feet go over the cliff!
