Taking Care of Your Foot Health: Five Shoe Categories You should Strictly Avoid

The definition of a ‘good’ pair of shoes varies from person to person. While current trends of style and fashion remain the prime criteria for many consumers, there are some, who consider durability of shoes as of crucial importance. Maybe, women buyers are typically charmed by style. They pick up shoes which have instant appeal. Unfortunately foot health seems to merit the least consideration.

Buying a good pair of shoes is not really rocket science, but it’s not that easy either. Often people invest in flashy pairs only to discover later those shoes are unsuitable for foot health. Here we take a look at five particular shoe categories which you should try to avoid at any cost.

Ultra-narrow high heels

As maintained by expert podiatrists, your ‘ultra-narrow high heels’ is to blame for painful foot conditions. Such a pair can cause soreness of Achilles tendon. As the high heels position your feet unnaturally, the extra stress on your foot bones may result in hairline fractures. If you love to wear narrow heels, the safer choice would be to shift to chunky heels with greater surface area.

Ballet flat

As a ballet flat doesn’t offer any arch support, it hampers normal foot function. This can cause not only knee pain, but also hip and back problems. Another painful condition you might experience due to little arch support is plantar fasciitis (pain and inflammation of a thick band of tissue, called the plantar fascia that connects your heel bone to your toes). If you can’t really resist the temptation of a cute pair of ballet flats, go in for orthotic inserts to provide extra cushioning to the heel portion.

Flip-flop slipper

A flip-flop can be trendy, no doubt, but it doesn’t offer adequate protection to your foot. When you wear a flip-flop, most parts of your foot remain exposed, and are thus vulnerable to sudden injuries; suffering unexpected cuts and scratches is quite common. If you are diabetic, you should strictly avoid the flip-flop. Sandals with adequate thickness would be comparatively safer.

Platform shoes

When you take a close look at a pair of platform shoes, you will notice the rigid foot beds; whether they serve to add value to foot wear fashion or not, they certainly serve to obstruct normal foot function.

When you walk, it’s normal for your foot to bend a little; but the rigid platform soles resist the bending. If the shoe heels happen to be much higher than the toe portion, greater pressure is applied to the metatarsal bones. Consequently, your foot health is affected considerably. Flatter platform shoes would be a better alternative though not advisable.

Pointy toe shoes

Pointy toe shoes may be your favorite, simply because of the extreme trendiness. However, you pay a heavy price for the pointed toes: if you wear such shoes regularly, your toes get crushed constantly, leading to foot conditions like blisters, hammertoes or bunions.

In worst cases there can be nerve pain too. Sometimes your toenails may develop bruises as well.  Shoes with wider toe boxes may offer some relief to your sore feet.

Buying a pair of shoes is not simply for proclaiming your style quotient: it should be more for preserving your foot health. If you are still uncertain of the right shoe selection, do consult an experienced podiatrist for healthy guidance.

How You can Prevent Swollen Feet

Foot swelling can indeed affect your normal life. Suddenly you realize one day your regular shoe size does not fit properly. Also, you feel certain heaviness and pain while walking.

The good news is that, with a little bit of precaution, you can prevent the foot and ankle swelling problem. Discussed below are a few easy-to-adopt measures, which should take care of your puffy foot.

Don’t stand or sit for hours at a stretch

Most jobs today demand sitting or standing for long hours. After work, you find walking quite uncomfortable and sometimes painful too. The simple solution suggested is to interrupt your sitting or standing work schedule, and take a break after every one or two hours.

You may take a few steps up and down, or elevate your feet and do some stretching exercise for a couple of minutes in your own office, to relax your taut foot muscles.

Do regular exercises

Swelling of foot or ankle happens often due to poor blood circulation and fluid distribution. Weight gain is another reason which causes excess pressure on your muscles and joints.

An effective solution for you is to draw a regular exercise schedule, and stick to it religiously. To start with, do the exercise under expert supervision, before continuing it on your own.

Eat balanced diet

Stay away from high salty food, as it can cause fluid retention, which in turn can trigger foot inflammation. It would be good for you to prepare a healthy diet chart, avoiding excessively oily and sugary foods: they can lead to weight gain too. If needed, seek the help of a dietician who would suggest an appropriate diet plan to match your body needs.

Lose weight

Obesity is one of the major underlying causes of foot problems. Your food habit might not be the sole cause for weight gain.

Health problems like high blood pressure, heart disease, osteoarthritis and gout too may trigger obesity. Also, some medicines can cause weight gain.

Weight loss, therefore helps cure not only your foot problems, but also the other health problems mentioned above.

Avoid foot/ankle injury

If you have a sprained ankle, it can lead to swelling. This is because, the ligament which holds your ankle in place, stretches beyond its limit due to the injury. Take adequate rest, if you have foot or ankle injury. Also, apply ice pack, keep your foot elevated and wrap the injured portion with a compression bandage for relief.

Usually foot and ankle swelling is not a cause for concern. For instance, pregnancy often triggers foot swelling, and the problem recedes by itself after delivery. In general, you can depend on the measures suggested above.

Most foot problems are temporary, which can be solved by changing your lifestyle and diet, and, if necessary, by taking some simple medications.

However, if you suffer puffy foot along with certain other health issues, you can’t afford to take it lightly. Sometimes your foot condition can be a warning signal, indicating serious health ailments. Consult with a podiatrist or senior physician promptly in such instances.

Five Health Conditions Your Feet can Indicate

You are only partially right, if you think God gave you feet just to support your body weight, and help you in running, walking or moving about.

Perhaps, you may not be aware of the fact that your feet can be an amazing diagnostic tool, providing clues to potential health problems you might face sooner than later.

Why should you rush to the doctor only when an affliction has firmly set in? Why don’t you give a little attention to the tell-tale signals of your feet, warning you of a few serious health issues?

Discussed below for your benefit are five health conditions that can be predicted on the basis of warning signals of your feet.

Dry and flaky foot

Dry, flaky or cracked skin around your heel or on the ball of your foot might indicate a thyroid condition.

Malfunctioning of the thyroid gland can lead to serious problems like high blood pressure, rising metabolic rate, harmful tissue growth, and disorder of the nervous system too.

You need to consult a doctor if your foot skin becomes dry, accompanied by weight gain, vision problems or numbness of hands.

Bald toes

If your toes start losing hair and turn completely bald, poor blood flow might be the cause. This may indicate Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD); if left untreated, it can cause sudden stroke or heart attack.

PAD can be effectively combated by giving up smoking, controlling diet, doing regular exercise and managing diabetes or hypertension.

Benumbed foot

Foot numbness again may indicate Peripheral Arterial Disease or Peripheral Neuropathy (malfunction of damaged nerves).

It is very important that you seek prompt medical advice if you experience: frequent numbness of feet in spite of staying active; wounds on your feet which don’t heal easily.

Regular exercise and healthy diet are recommended to normalize blood flow to your feet.

Black Spots under toenails

Black spots or lines under toenails can happen due to fungal infection. In severe cases, this may indicate melanoma, a kind of skin cancer. This condition is due to genetic mutation of a type of skin cell called Melanocyte.

Hidden melanomas often remain undiagnosed and untreated; this is not at all desirable. Do consult an expert podiatrist, if you experience toenail discoloration every time you cut nails.

Foot pain in the morning

You may experience shooting foot pain in the morning when you take the first few steps after getting up from bed; it can indicate a health condition such as rheumatoid arthritis, plantar fasciitis or muscle cramp.

You need to consult a foot care expert in case you suspect having rheumatoid arthritis symptoms; the podiatrist will suggest necessary medication and suitable exercise.

Appropriate stretching exercises can provide gradual relief from pain caused by undue pressure on plantar fasciitis, a thin web-like shock absorbing ligament in your foot.

The same holds true for muscle cramps as well; you need to switch to a balanced diet and increased water intake to treat the problem.

The warning signals of your foot described above may not always point to serious health ailments, of course! However, you should not risk ignoring any of these signs. Do consult a foot specialist to ascertain whether these symptoms contain a warning or not!

Protect Your Feet by Shedding Weight

You have every reason to worry when the weighing scale starts tilting beyond normal level – not because you look no more attractive, but for the more alarming reason that it can lead to several health problems. The one body part that gets immediately affected is your foot. You gain weight, and you might find your mobility the first casualty. Obesity can and does wreck your foot health.

Discussed below are a few helpful facts that would enlighten you on the significance of shedding weight to keep your foot health.

Relationship between body weight and foot health

It is the foot which bears the entire body weight. Gaining even an extra 25 pounds can tip the scale, and cause painful foot and ankle conditions. This is because the extra weight gain changes automatically your body posture while walking. Your knees come closer, and the body weight shifts to the insides of your feet triggering various problems.

Obesity-caused specific foot problems

Obesity makes you susceptible to several health conditions like diabetes, high uric acid, peripheral arterial disease and so on. High uric acid in turn causes gout, a painful condition which affects foot and ankle joints. Due to diabetes you might experience numbness of feet, often leading to sudden injuries. Sometimes, accumulation of plaque in the arterial walls of your legs can lead to reduction of blood flow to the feet.

In serious cases, amputation of toes or feet is not improbable. Apart from these, tendon inflammation, swelling and tenderness of the plantar fascia and osteoarthritis are a few common outcomes of obesity, which can affect normal, active life.

Damage control

When overweight is the root cause of your foot problem, you need to lose weight undoubtedly to handle the situation. Intense physical activity is the best solution; but if you start working too hard all of a sudden, you might end up with foot injuries.

That is why doctors suggest low-impact aerobic activities, most preferably water aerobics. Start exercising gradually; avoid too strenuous activities, which can aggravate your foot condition.

Before starting any new exercise regime, seek your physician’s guidance to ensure that your heart and lungs are strong enough to endure the activity. Besides, you need to keep a close watch on the diet: include healthy food items to prevent fat accumulation.

When to consult a podiatrist?

Often you may fail to recognize the culprit – the pair of shoes you wear. If your foot condition does not improve, in spite of reducing body weight and exercising regularly, then you need to visit a podiatrist: you need to make sure your shoes are of right size and shape.

If your shoes do not support properly your body weight, that would impact directly your feet. In such a situation, your podiatrist can suggest a pair of shoes that would best complement your feet for safe mobility and good health.

To sum up, track your body weight regularly. Take prompt action the moment you feel something is wrong with your feet.

Selecting the Right Shoes to Ease Your Heel Pain

The need to excel in every sphere of life keeps us on the move all the time. It

leads to overexertion, which can become manifest as heel pain. You may love greatly certain activities like high-intensity treks or long walks: heel pain can be a spoil sport and hinder not only those passionate activities but also simple everyday routine.

Let not your heel pain get in the way of a normal life. Here, for your benefit, is a brief on the problem of heel pain, an effective solution and the precautions you can take.

Heel pain

There is, in your foot, a thick flat band of tissue (ligament) called plantar fascia; it serves to link your toes to the heel; it extends from the heel to the front of the foot, and supports the arch. Plantar fasciitis is a foot condition wherein the plantar fascia gets damaged due to excessive strain; the ligament is weakened, swollen and inflamed.

As a result of this condition, you may experience shooting heel pain as soon as you get down from bed in the morning.  Sitting or standing for long periods can cause the pain too. Placing excessive weight on the inner side of the feet (pronation), weak calf muscles, walking barefoot and wearing incorrect shoes are some other causes of heel pain.

The shoe connection

Wearing the wrong shoe is one of the major reasons of heel pain. If your shoes are ill fitting, or do not offer good support and grip, then your heels are bound to become sore. It stresses basically the arch of the foot resulting in flat feet – lowering of the arch than normal. If you have very soft soles in your shoes, the situation can get worse.

The wrong shoes

If you’re already suffering from heel pain, then it’s time to examine closely the kind of shoes you wear, and the kind of support it gives the arch of the feet. You should make every effort to avoid using all kinds of shoes that stress overly the arch, heels and inner side of the feet. The culprits include high heels, stilettos, flip-flops, platform shoes, shoes with pointy toes, celebrity trendsetter shoes, and wrong-sized shoes,

The right shoes

When you buy new shoes, necessitated by heel pain, make sure that the back of the shoe that wraps your heel is firm. This ensures adequate ankle and foot support. Secondly, the sole should also be firm and sturdy. This prevents any overstretching of your feet. Shoes must also have heel-to-toe-rocker sole which helps your feet move forward.

Also, make sure your shoe has heels elevated by about an inch. This relieves pressure off the heels and absorbs any impact on strike. Finally it’s prudent to wear shoes with lace rather than slip-ons for a better grip. In addition, you will find different types of insoles that can be purchased separately and placed in shoes for greater comfort.

Apart from these measures, anti-inflammatory medications, calf stretching exercises and natural home remedies should relieve you of the pain to some extent. However, it’s advisable for you to check with your podiatrist to get prescriptions of appropriate medications and remedies for nagging heel pain.

Winter is Coming: Five Foot Problems You should Beware

With winter knocking at the door, you must have already started taking out warm clothes, woolen socks and snug shoes. This is one season which can be actually felt by every part of the body, often resulting in certain discomfort. Since your feet remains maximum exposed to the chilling weather, it can lead to several painful conditions.

And so, if you want to enjoy a pain-free active winter, here are listed five common foot conditions you need to be careful about.

Heel spur

The comfortable cold weather encourages you to become over-active. You want to make up for those gym sessions or jogging schedules you missed during sweaty summer months. This is the time when team activities and organized sports get arranged too. Such activities can result in injuries like heel spur, runner’s knee, and shin splints.

Ingrown toenails

You start wearing closed-in shoes during this season to keep your feet warm. And it can aggravate ingrown toenails condition, if you are already suffering from it. Even the pressure of your heavy blankets can sometimes irritate those ingrown toenails! Consult a podiatrist to manage this problem better, which would guarantee a good night’s sleep.  

Dry cracked skin

You just can’t avoid dry cracked skin as it starts losing moisture during winter months. Foot skin gets affected the most, as it can peel and develop cracks too. In severe situations, the skin crack opens very badly and starts bleeding, especially in areas where the pressure is highest, i.e. the heel. Wash your feet daily with gentle pumice stone or loofah. Then apply a good moisturizing cream. Consult a podiatrist for remedial measures, if the painful condition persists still.

Fungal infections

Many are of the opinion that fungal infections are the same as dry cracked skin, since both foot conditions appear to be the same, to start with. If the problem is ascertained to be fungal infection, then soon you will notice redness, itching and scaling. In severe cases, open wounds appear on the bottom of your feet. Check between your toes as these are the common hiding spots for some types of fungal infections. Application of Tea tree can prove to be helpful; or else seek guidance of a foot specialist.

Chilblains

It is a common foot problem which is triggered by cold weather. You have chilblains, if you notice small red-colored swellings along with itchiness. When your foot remains exposed to cold weather for long, blood vessels in your toes tend to get smaller in size. Keep your feet warm and these cold-affected blood vessels will return to normal size.

In case your toes become warm too fast, that can cause pain, swelling, redness, and blistering, typically associated with chilblains. It can be treated by applying the right kind of lotions and creams as prescribed by your podiatrist. If left untreated for long, chilblains can prove to be harmful and can lead to ulcers too.

As evident from the above discussion, most of these foot conditions can be prevented or managed by adopting simple measures. If you feel that your foot problem is chronic and refuses to subside, then do get in touch with a reputable podiatrist before it is too late.

How You can Prevent Foot Drop

Keeping your feet firmly on the ground – literally – can become difficult if you suffer from certain painful conditions. Foot drop (sometimes called drop foot) is one such ailment which makes it difficult for you to lift the front part of your foot, particularly the toes upwards. It is not a disease in itself. Rather it is a symptom which points towards some basic ailments or medical conditions.

If you suffer from foot drop, you need to address conditions like tendon, muscle or nerve injuries. This foot problem can arise from multiple sclerosis, injury to the spinal cord or a sudden stroke. Sometimes drug reactions can also cause the condition. It can be hereditary too. Some may experience foot drop for a temporary period, while for many it can turn out to be a permanent problem. Discussed below are a few facts which would help you prevent foot drop.

What causes foot drop

Try walking on your heels for a few minutes and if you experience some difficulty, then there is every chance that you suffer from foot drop. As already mentioned, this particular condition arises from tendon or muscle damage which can happen from a sudden injury or some other medical condition. A hip or knee surgery can directly cause foot drop. Disorder of the central nervous system might also lead to this foot condition. Adverse reaction of some drugs especially the ones used during chemotherapy can cause the illness, though for a temporary period. Alcohol can be the reason too.

How to treat foot drop

Surgery is the only option if foot drop is the direct outcome of muscle or tendon injury or a herniated disc (sometimes called a slipped disk or a ruptured disk). In certain cases, podiatrists suggest nerve stimulation by surgically implanting a small device below the knee; it is done if nerve damage is the prime cause. This device generates small electrical pulses which stimulate the nerves to function normally while walking. Physical therapy and exercises are commonly suggested which help strengthen muscles and tendons, thereby preventing recurrence of foot drop.

Accessories that help reduce discomfort due to foot drop

A number of devices are available to reduce discomfort caused by foot drop. You can opt for blanket lifters which protect sensitive feet from excessive weight of the blanket or heavy sheets. It is particularly advised after foot drop surgery. A splint or brace can help stabilize and soothe foot and ankle joint. Mostly designed like a boot, the brace supports your foot while walking. Then there are other devices such as foot positioner, heel guard, foot elevator and foot lifter, each of which is specifically designed to prevent further damage to and stress of tendons and muscles.

When to seek medical advice

If you suffer from foot drop, then it would be the right thing to seek immediate medical advice. You can consult a qualified foot specialist to follow the right course of treatment and to check whether you need any surgery. If any medical condition is the cause of the problem, that needs to be attended too.

Preventing foot drop is not that tough. Do not make things tougher for you, if you already suffer it: you just need to be aware of the right solution that works best for you.