(Published in Enrich magazine)
LOVE YOUR FEET, please. And prove that love by treating your feet
with a lot more respect.
Think about it. How far can you go without your
feet? The answer: nowhere. And how far can you get with an injured foot? Not very
far.
Feet are the underdogs of our anatomy. They’re so
far down south, however, that we sometimes even forget they’re even there. We
take them for granted.
We wear tight or ill-fitting footwear that injure
our feet. Few of us even bother to soap in between our toes when we bathe. We
let calluses go untreated. And any foot pain we experience we hope will go away
the next morning.
About the only time we remember how vital our feet
are to our daily functioning as human beings is when something goes wrong with
them.
Like when you lose them in an accident. Or an injury
prevents you from walking.
Next to losing your eyesight, losing your feet is
probably the worst thing that can happen to you.
Our feet will have traveled tens of thousands of
kilometers in our lifetime. One estimate said the average adult will have
walked the equivalent of four times around the world before he dies.
Since the circumference of the Earth is about 40,000
kilometers at the Equator, that means you’ll have walked some 160,000
kilometers! And your feet will still be there when you take that last step
before exiting this life.
Home feet and
business feet
You can start on the road to treating your feet
better by remembering your feet have two “homes.” Your feet’s first and most important home is
your home or the place where you live.
Call this your “home feet.” Its second home is the place where you work or
study. Call this your “business feet.”
Why the distinction? That’s because you have to
treat your home feet and business feet differently.
Home is the best place to prove your love for your
feet. That’s because you can walk barefoot at home and podiatrists, or foot
doctors, agree that walking barefoot is the best way to treat your feet.
Walking barefoot is the natural gait for human
beings. A study made five years ago in South Africa that compared feet from
three different population groups concluded that “. . . prior to the invention
of shoes, people had healthier feet.”
The study said the shoe shod Europeans had the
unhealthiest feet while the Zulus, one of South Africa’s largest indigenous
tribes, had the healthiest because they walked barefoot most of the time.
An American podiatrist wrote that “Natural gait is
biomechanically impossible for any shoe-wearing person.” He’s right and you’ve
got the painful experience to prove it.
Mind you, I’m not encouraging you to walk barefooted
outside your home or to your office. The reason I made the distinction between
home feet and business feet is to encourage you to walk barefooted inside your own
home.
Walking barefoot is natural and healthy. You should
walk barefoot at home to remind your body that it should rely on the natural
architecture of the feet. Walking barefoot allows freedom of movement in your
feet ankles, legs and helps improve posture.
Start walking barefoot at home. Ditch the injury-prone
flip flops and slippery slippers. Give your home feet a chance to be
comfortable.
Having your feet touch the floor gives you a
marvelous feeling of control and a natural ease of movement. Most important, it
feels and it is natural.
There’s an added bonus to deciding to walk barefoot
at home. You’ll be forced to clean your floors regularly and that’s good for
your family.
Keep those dirty shoes and muddy slippers outside your
home. Inside, make your home a clean haven for your home feet.
Business feet
Your home feet enters an alien world every time you
take them outside your home. This more stressful environment requires your feet
be protected. Shoes are the logical
“armor” that protect your home feet from the dangers of the outside world.
Trouble is that a lot of shoes on the market,
especially formal footwear such as business shoes, seem as hard or as heavy as
steel armor. That’s a problem for your business feet, which can be choked inside
shoes up to 12 hours a day.
Although really useful, shoes are the enemy of
healthy posture and movement. Shoes stunt the free movement of the feet and the
entire leg. They change the way we walk, and lead to physical stress and strain
throughout the body. Your business feet suffer if you wear the wrong shoes.
Shoes also impede the graceful form of walking and the
effortless ease of movement of the body that comes with walking barefoot. To
put it bluntly, feet are good and shoes, bad.
But we can’t live without shoes, especially in this
country that’s either too hot or too wet. We need shoes once we exit our home
and go to work or school or to travel.
We can compromise, however. Here are a few tips on
how to be kinder to your business feet.
Always, always buy a pair of shoes for comfort and
not fashion. That means preferring low heeled shoes to high heels and shoes
with a large toe box to pointed shoes that will kill your feet. Foot health
experts prefer shoes with shoelaces instead of slip-ons since you can adjust
the laces to improve foot comfort.
It’s a tough choice, especially for the ladies, but
would you rather walk in pain and look good or walk in comfort and look so-so?
When buying a new pair of shoes it would be wise to
consider buying a pair with
“breathable uppers.” Uppers are the part of a shoe
that covers the top of the foot, the toes, the sides of the foot and the back
of the heel
Breathable uppers can be different types of leathers
or synthetic mesh. The key thing to pay attention to is whether or not the
upper's material allows moisture to escape and air to enter to keep feet dry.
Look for an “arch support” inside your pair of
shoes. A proper arch support minimizes pain while walking by correctly
realigning the lower limbs. It helps distribute weight and removes pressure
from the heel and forefoot.
Badly made shoes with no arch support can strain
your feet and put unnecessary pressure on joints and muscles in the lower
limbs.
Shoes with padded collars are to be preferred. A
padded collar helps minimize ankle pain.
A cushioned or soft “tongue” can prevent discomfort
caused by pressure of tied shoelaces. It also pushes the heel back to provide a
better fit.
A wide “toe box” or the front part of the shoe gives
toes more wiggle room. It also adds comfort and reduces some foot problems such
as corns and calluses.
Shoes that fit properly and support your feet can
prevent sore feet and alleviate many common foot problems. They’re the only healthy
alternative to walking barefoot.
You’ve got to be kinder to your feet because you
won’t get anywhere in life without them.
