Simple Steps to Foot Pain Relief. Katy Bowman
like gravity, pressure, and friction) applied to living tissues. My personal area of study is the biomechanics of disease and injury, and I am dedicated to teaching the basic principles of physical science to people just like you, for the purpose of preventing and reversing damage to the human body.
This book is also about something bigger than your feet (even if you have really big feet). This book will talk about ailments north of the ankles that are being influenced by the state of your feet—ailments created where other body parts are responding to the impact of your footwear. Because of the way our health care system is segmented, experts of the feet don’t typically talk to the experts of the spine or experts of the nervous system. Medical experts are thoroughly trained in the biological sciences as opposed to the physical sciences; since we all look for solutions using what’s in our own tool bag, those who research human ailments tend to look for solutions in chemistry (pharmaceuticals) or genetics.
From the biomechanical field, research on changes in human geometry and body positioning and how they create loading damage on tissue is only now emerging in the medical journals. The effects geometry has on physical forces like pressure, friction, and gravity, has been thoroughly understood in the physical sciences for hundreds of years. Geometry, along with the basic laws of Newtonian physics, applies as much to the human body as to any other physical structure in our universe. The more one understands the anatomical structures and physiological processes that drive human tissue regeneration, the clearer the picture becomes. This book will explain the mechanics of how common foot ailments develop in response to body geometry created by footwear and everyday postures. While the body adjustments may seem simple, keep in mind the science behind the solutions is as consistent as gravity itself.
Specific foot ailments vary, but in general, a foot ailment of any kind interferes with the ability of the entire body to function. There is hardly a human movement that does not involve the feet. No matter the current condition of your feet, you will find some piece of information in this book that will improve how you move, and in turn, improve how you feel.
A word of caution: this book is not a substitute for professional care but rather a manual on how things work in your feet, and how to alter habits that may be contributing to your problem. Human tissue is phenomenal stuff. When you make small changes in your movement patterns, you nudge yourself down a new physiological path. The body works to tear down old or underused tissue every day, and builds up tissues that are in greatest demand. The body continuously adapts to whatever you are doing now.
Changing your habits will change your life!
“He shifted his weight from foot to foot, but it was equally uncomfortable on each.”
—DOUGLAS ADAMS
First, let me congratulate you. Picking up this book is the first step toward improving the health of your feet, knees, hips, pelvis, spine, and bones. Most of what you are about to read was gathered during different parts of the academic research I did for my master’s thesis. Using a force plate to see how shifts in hip position change the loads on the foot, measuring how flip-flops change your gait pattern, or observing how upper body curvature affects balance are everyday occurrences in a biomechanics lab. It is from these experiences that I designed the exercise protocol in this book, not only to make the foot healthy but also to optimize how the foot works with other tissues in the body. Through my corrective exercises and alignment suggestions—via books, DVDs, at our training center, or online—thousands have been successful in repairing their own feet by learning to change how they move. Some have shared their stories in this book to help motivate and inspire you and to illustrate that the solution really can be simple.
There are three likely reasons this book has called out to you:
1. You have feet.
2. You love the human body, preventive medicine, and anything to do with health.
3. As you are reading this, you have an aching, stabbing, soreness, swelling, stiffening, bunioning, smashing, cramping, and/or a limping sensation in your feet. You also have a closet of shoes, along with a vague notion that the two may be related. (Here’s a hint: you’re right.)
You have had your feet since birth. You’ve had them in your mouth, you’ve had them stepped on, and you have definitely had them squished into what seemed like a good style choice at the time. But chances are that you have no idea of the inner workings of your foot and ankles.
While you have about 200 bones in your entire body, 25 percent of them reside from the ankles down. The same goes for your muscles—a quarter of all the muscles and motor nerves in your body are dedicated to your feet. Despite all of these movable parts, I’ll bet you’ve never been told this part of your body needs movement to keep healthy.
A keen student of the natural sciences, Leonardo da Vinci referred to the foot as the most complex piece of machinery ever designed. Don’t let this statement mislead you, however, into thinking that understanding your anatomy is over your head. While the function of the foot is fantastically detailed, you will be amazed at how easy it is to navigate your way around a complicated area when you have a map. Wait, did you not get your map to the foot? Well, here it is.
Okay, you probably don’t need to know this much anatomy in order to successfully steer yourself to healthier feet. That being said, you probably need to know a little bit more than this:
When it comes down to it, most of us know more about our cars than our bodies. Knowing the basics of automobile maintenance and performance parameters can significantly reduce the wear and tear on your car; the same goes for your anatomical parts.
To make significant headway toward healthy feet, you don’t have to know the name of every single bone, muscle, tendon, and ligament that you can find in your feet, but you should know the general landscape and some basic terms.
In addition, a little information goes a long way when it comes to your ability to self-assess your ranges of motion, giving you an objective measure for your level of foot health. Knowing the correct anatomical terms will also help you to communicate with more self-empowerment, should you need to make a medical appointment. As a five-year-old, I’d have to point to a body location when the doctor asked, “Where does it hurt?” It’s kind of embarrassing when you have to do the same thing as a thirty-, forty-, or sixty-year-old. With the number of baby boomers on the rise, and the steadily declining state of health across the country, the time has come to take more responsibility for our own personal health. Of course, if you are reading this book, you have already assumed that responsibility. Good for you!
THE HISTORY OF FEET
Feet and humans go back a long way. In fact, they go back all the way, right to the beginning. They grew up together, and evolved together, for hundreds of thousands of years before any shoes showed up on the scene. In the modern world, shoes have served to protect our living tissue from the unnatural surfaces that generate excessive forces, both at the surface (skin), and below it (bone). The increase of human-made debris has also created safety issues while walking barefoot through natural environments. Stemming from pre-antibiotic days when foot puncture could be catastrophic even for even a healthy person, footwear gradually evolved from light surface protection to completely engineered full-body stabilizers like the hiking boot. Recently a whole new category of footwear—“healthy shoes”—has emerged, along with myriad enticing claims about how a particular shoe design can increase our health or fitness levels if we do nothing more than wear them.
Footwear has evolved to a level of almost complete protection of the tissue