SHAPE YOUR FOOT - HEAL YOUR PAIN

All the ladies who keep shaping their foot cosmetically by pedicure, stylish footwear, nail-paints and foot accessories kindly pay attention to this write up. When you can take care of how well your feet looks then you should also look after how well your foot works or moves. I am not going to face your anger by saying do not wear high heels etc. etc. but you should definitely cut down the time for which your feet suffocates in those high heel shoes. 

Now to all the men who are living highly sedentary life, we are not made for sitting that long where you do not move your feet or weight bear on them. Our feet are living structures but not plants or trees who can survive just by being fixed to its roots. So moving out and repeatedly taking active breaks from your sitting work is highly recommended.

There are 54 bones in your ankles and feet altogether along with 33 joints, 107 ligaments, 19 muscles and tendons that hold everything in place. As a child you have more bones but some of them gets fused by the time you become an adult. We become brutal to our feet by keeping these numerous bones locked in shoes for at least 8 to 10 hours. 

Also the reduced physical activity doesn't load your feet enough and consequently the muscles to hold these small bones and the arches becomes weak. These small muscles holds the foot in normal stable position but due to weakness the foot and ankle wobbles (unstable). This disturbed stability afffects your other joints like knee, hip or even spine for the reason that nobody moves just from one part of the body. If you do not move correctly with your ankles then you can't move right from your other body parts.

As  consequence, a disturbed mechanics of your foot can lead to number of problems like Heel Pain (Plantar Fascitis), Knee pain or even Low Back Pain. A lot of health professionals like Podiatrists (Ankle and foot specialist), Physiotherapist and Chiropractors believe that even a neck pain or a cervical headache can be the result of poor foot mechanics.

The solution to this problem lies in becoming aware of how your lifestyle is affecting your health. Just knowing the wrong things and making little effort towards correcting it can make a huge difference to prevent what you may suffer and regret from. Here is a check list which you need to keep in mind in order to stay foot friendly :

Avoid prolong standing with your heels. 

Avoid pointed heels and prefer platforms.

Prefer wider shoes with raised arch support.

Instead of prolonged sitting do intermittent sitting. 

Learn some basic workplace foot exercises which are not time consuming.

Increase your effort to do more physical activities not just the weekend struggles.

Allow your feet to breathe out of your shoes and bellies very regularly during office hours.

Remember just a small change in your daily behavior can save you and your money from unnecessary damage to your health. Hence, SHAPE YOUR FOOT for better health not just the better looks. 

Feel free to comment below if you are curious enough to know more on this subject.

THE WRONG MOVE

With all the bones intact (Not broken or removed), our body is comprised of 206 or more bones. The variation usually comes if you have an extra lumbar spine (6th Lumbar vertebra). 32 plus teeth or extra fingers or thumb. But you can't do anything with them if you do not have numerous muscles enclosed with the single Fascia running through the whole body.

For completing a simple task, your body has to undergo a complex series of movements where your brain via spinal cord orders the muscles to move  in a complicated manner. Moreover if you succeed in completing it satisfactorily your brain registers it as a success and retains the memory of sequence to use it when you do anything similar to the previous activity. Have you ever wondered how  dancers coordinate with music and do performances without forgetting the steps? Yes they do practice repeatedly till they improve their moves and the brain learns the sequence of their performance. 

   

In pain, your movement pattern gets disturbed and you abnormally use your body so that work can be done in a least painful manner. This pain avoidance behaviour is normal during acute phase of injury but after sometime you still move in an altered way as you have registered the memory of moving in particular manner. As the time passes and healing completes, these wrong movement pattern sometimes doesn't allow the pain to settle down or it transfer pain to some other site.

   

Imagine an elbow injury where you can't use your elbow effectively due to pain, so you will overload your shoulder or wrist to do your daily activities. In this case you might hike the shoulder up or modify the wrist position to finish your activities. Gradually you develop the memory of using your arm in this way and even after recovering from elbow injury overuse of shoulder or wrist may continue. This might lead to unresolved elbow pain or development of new painful site at the shoulder or wrist later on. There is a possibility that you may not remember the real reason for your pain as there was no trauma or injury to your shoulder or wrist.

With many patients complaining of pain, I always found some level of altered movement pattern which biomechanically is causing an overstress to the area under pain. With careful and detailed examination, we can find out if the person is lacking a good quality of movement around painful area. Memory building of the correct movements with focusing on building strength can greatly improve the quality of movement and will help the pain as well.

Proper education and rehabilitation of your previous injury can play a major role in preventing the future consequences of wrong movement patterns. Exercise to correct or restore normal movement pattern is beneficial if you think you have an unresolved pain at the injured area or a relative pain at different region.

Please drop your comments  if you have also noticed that you don't move right or have unresolved pain which doesn't let you survive happily.

Your Movement Expert

Dr. Kunal Vashist, PT

Senior Physiotherapist

Musculoskeletal and Orthopaedic disorders

(kvashist.physio@gmail.com)

9968302757