SELF-HELP PREVENTION: CAUSES OF ACHING FEET
Aching feet are hardly a subject for high-tech medicine and more often than not elicit a laugh rather than sympathy. After all, no one ever died of them. However, when your feet hurt you hurt all over and aching feet can make the most easy-going person irritable and tense. Painful feet in turn can cause back pain, knee problems and even stress and fatigue because of the abnormal postures your body takes up. All of this will make you less likely to want to play games and to take exercise and the cycle continues.
Almost eight out of ten people have aching feet at one time or another, according to surveys-in fact it is the third most common medical complaint. But why is the foot so vulnerable to aches and injuries? For a start it is a very complex structure of 26 bones, 56 ligaments and 38 muscles. This means there is a lot to go wrong-and the heavy punishment our feet take can accentuate problems that in other parts of the body might go unnoticed. By the age of 35 the average person will have walked 45,000 miles and the ball of the foot may be subjected to a force of 200 lb all the time and far more on running and jumping. Being furthest from the heart the feet have the poorest circulation of the body and this reduces with age as the arteries supplying the lower limbs narrow. Most of us wear shoes which immobilize the feet to a great extent and as a result the foot’s muscles are in a pretty poor state a lot of the time.
The greatest single cause of aching feet is poor footwear. Under constant pressure from tight or ill-fitting shoes, the skin of the foot becomes hardened and forms corns. Shoes which are too tight can cause ingrowing toenails or a painful thickening of the nail of the big toe.
Women have by far the greatest number of foot problems (about 85 per cent, according to several experts), mainly because of the style of women’s shoes. High heels make the body slide forwards, and to rebalance it a woman has to alter her whole posture. This takes the form of sticking her buttocks and her stomach out. The higher the heel the more the weight of the body is thrown on to the ball of the foot and a woman with a wide forefoot will end up with corns, bunions and hammer toes when her foot is jammed into a pointed shoe. High heels, if worn all the time, can also shorten the Achilles tendon at the back of the heel and leave the wearer open to injuries.
Platform shoes can cause painful bleeding under the big toenail and tight boots can actually cut off the circulation. Bunions (an inflammation of the joint where the toes meet the foot) are often caused by shoes that force the big toe into an unnatural angle.
The way people walk reflects the way they feel. Depressed people walk sloppily with a shuffling gait, and the stresses that this can put on the feet can cause problems. Though plantar warts (verrucas) are caused by a virus, there is a school of thought that says that they only occur when the individual is emotionally run down or stressed.
With the current vogue for walking and jogging an increasing number of individuals are suffering from a condition called plantar fasciitis. In this the thick band of fibrous tissue that runs the length of the sole linking the heel to the ball of the foot becomes inflamed. Sometimes the insertion of the fascia pulls away from the heel bone and a bony spur forms. These heel spurs are themselves very painful but the increased pulling of the tissue away from the bone that often accompanies fasciitis is the most common source of foot pain among adults who exercise. The earliest signs of fasciitis are a bruised sensation in the heel which won’t go away or pain in the sole as you get out of bed in the morning.
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Tagged as: General health
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