Why You Need Good Foot Support
If your feet hurt, there could be something wrong – and your symptoms might not just be felt in the feet. Wearing the right shoes and ensuring your feet are properly supported can completely change your feet comfort!
Everything starts with the feet – they are your support, your transport and your very foundations. They hold your weight, balance you, propel you and absorb shock. As a result, their stability and overall mechanical performance is crucially important – and not something to ignore.
They’ve always been there, at the end of our legs and for that very reason, we tend to take them for granted. If you consider how they are constructed, it’s easier to appreciate that they need to be treated with care. Each foot is made up of 26 bones, 33 joints and more than 100 muscles, tendons and ligaments.
Here are more facts: the average person will walk 240,000 kilometers in a lifetime; the equivalent to walking around the world five times. Then, for each mile that you walk, the arch bears between 90,000 and 135,000 kilograms of stress . 90% of people experience some sort of foot problem, with 20% suffering from chronic long-term foot pain.
A great deal of how you balance and walk depends on the shape of your arch. The different shapes of the arch mean you might need more support for your feet.
Make sure the shoe fits
We all want to look stylish, follow fashion, and have pain-free feet, but sometimes that’s a difficult balancing act. If your feet don’t have proper support, this can throw your body out of alignment, which can mean poor posture, pain and balance issues. So bear these tips in mind when buying footwear:
- Ensure there’s room between your foot and the shoe at the toe and the heel
- Avoid slip-ons in favour of adjustable fastenings
- If you have to wear heels, make sure they’re less than 4cm (11/2”) in height
- Choose shoes with removable insoles so that you can fit in your own supports or orthotics
- Try to find shoes that hold the heel firmly
Extra support
Insoles help to provide more cushioning and support and they increase stability. This can also contribute to alleviating problems in the back and hips. Heel cushions can be used to reduce unnecessary knee movement and absorb shock more effectively.
The most important thing for foot care is to find the right solution for you – when you get the right product, you’ll know! A simple adjustment in your footwear could revolutionize how your feet feel at the end of a long day of standing and walking for hours.