Healthy Feet: Why They Matter for the Rest of Your Body
Did you know that fully a quarter of your body’s bones are in your feet? These complex marvels of engineering by Mother Nature provide your body with a firm foundation, and are constantly in demand to help move the body from one place to another. With 19 muscles and 26 bones each, your feet are important for the balance and health of the entire body.
Dr. Brian Jensen, a chiropractor, offers this perspective: “By age 20, an estimated 80 percent of people develop some type of foot imbalance. By age 40, foot imbalances plague virtually everyone.” If the foundation is out of balance, then the rest of the structure (the body) is thrown out of balance. Invariably, this means the ankles, knees, hips and spine are adversely affected. A misaligned spine can cause chronic pain and can increase the risk of other musculoskeletal problems.
One key way the feet can cause spinal problems is by causing an imbalance in your gait—the way you walk. If your stride is off a little, it can eventually cause the supporting structures of your spine to be subject to stress in the wrong places, eventually pulling your spine out of alignment. According to Dr. Jenson, collapsed arches (“over-pronation”) are the most common source of problems with the feet, causing them to roll inward as an individual walks. Excessive supination (“under-pronation” or the foot rolling to the outside) is the opposite problem.
Both over-pronation and under-pronation often leave telltale signs in the uneven way a person’s shoes wear over time. Typically, a shoe’s heel or sole will become noticeably more worn on either the inside or outside edge. Some pronation is normal, but when both feet pronate too much and for too long a period, then your musculoskeletal health is at risk.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warns of two other health problems involving the feet—obesity and diabetes. Carrying lots of extra weight obviously increases the wear and tear on your body’s joints and is particularly hard on the feet. Diabetes can affect circulation as well as the peripheral nervous system—especially in the extremities—making it more difficult to walk and more difficult to heal after injuries. Both of these conditions set up a vicious cycle where pain and dysfunction often lead to reduced mobility, which in turn often leads to additional weight gain and diabetic symptoms.
Depending on your particular situation, your chiropractor can assist you in finding the proper orthotics for your feet to help correct these kinds of mechanical issues and increase the amount of healthy cushion for absorbing the shock of walking.
And remember—the condition of each foot can change over time, so visit your chiropractor regularly to see if you need special insoles to protect your feet, ankles, knees, hips and spine.
Manual therapies have been used to treat musculoskeletal disorders for thousands of years. Practitioners around the world—in countries with many different cultural influences and diverse medical traditions—have used their hands to manipulate various parts of the body to stimulate healing. “Manual” literally means “by hand.” Thus, manual therapies consist of healing techniques that use the hands. There are more than two dozen techniques used worldwide. Among the most commonly known are acupressure, chiropractic, massage therapy, physiotherapy, reflexology, Rolfing and shiatsu.
Perhaps the most frequent injury involving automobiles comes from closing the door. Nearly 150,000 times a year, someone is injured in this fashion, and that’s with the car parked or stationary. This includes doors closing on fingers. Another 10,000 are injured by using a jack and 74,000 have been injured by a car or car part falling on them.
We are sharing an article today that was first run in the Billings Gazette in 2014. We think it has some good information and we have added a few tips of our own at the conclusion of the article:
Pain serves an important function in our lives. When you suffer an acute injury, pain warns you to stop the activity that is causing the injury and tells you to take care of the affected body part.
Take a look inside the average American’s medicine cabinet and you are likely to find out-of-date prescription medications, half-used bottles of lotion, some painkillers and a box of Band-Aids. Some of these are useful, and some should have been disposed of long ago. Along with the annual maintenance that you perform on your smoke detector, your medicine cabinet should have a thorough evaluation and clean-out once a year as well.
Even if your recent fender bender didn’t seem too serious, there’s still a very real chance that you or your passengers may have been hurt. That’s because even the most minor car accidents can cause hidden injuries and delayed symptoms. And while damage to your car is likely obvious and easy to assess, evaluating damage to your body may be far more difficult. In fact, it’s not unusual for a driver or passenger to walk away from a collision with potentially serious musculoskeletal injuries (such as a concussion or whiplash), without knowing it.