Sometimes you just can't Ignore Flat Feet

Fallen arches, flat feet, pes planus, whatever you choose to call it, most people who have the condition don't really find a reason to complain (other than about the embarrassment when people see their wet footprints somewhere and they appear suspiciously shapeless). People don't usually think of flat feet as any kind of medical problem. It's just an unseen way your feet are and they can be that way as long as they don't bother you. Except that they do, at some point.

People's usually start becoming aware of the medical implications of flat feet when about the time they hit 40, their feet begin to hurt in a most uncharacteristic manner. Sometimes, it becomes difficult just to basically get from one place to another. That's when they go ask an orthopedic doctor, for the first time in their lives, about what might be done about their feet. Usually, they go expecting that all they need is a little pulling and pushing, and a bit of physiotherapy. Sometimes, things aren't too far gone, and orthotics or a brace might do the trick. For some people, choices such as these actually seem to work. But often enough, the problem can be serious enough that nothing less than the attentions of a surgeon will do.

Surgery for flat feet, as any surgeon will tell you, isn't the worst part of it. It's the healing. Healing and recuperation after surgery on a complex part of your body that is constantly moving and constantly bearing a great deal of weight, can be singularly painful and unbelievably long. You should avoid it if you can; but if you just have no arches at all, your body keeps trying to balance the abnormality out by shifting weight in the most unusual way; and it can hurt your back and your knees the way you carry yourself.

Surgery can be spectacularly complex. You need three or four separate operations on each foot. Doctors usually operate on you one foot at a time, because they don't want you to not be able to move around at all. Your co-pay should run into about $5000 too. The operation itself is called an oseotomy: and it can be kind of faint-inducing to hear about it. They take a piece of bone from a dead person, coat in your own marrow, and put it in your ankle to shape your foot differently. They saw your heel off, and screw it back on in a slightly different position. And they do all this to create the effect of an arch.

It can take up to a year to get back to living life at 100%; but you'll definitely see that it makes a great difference.

And the Unfortubate News about Flip Flop Slippers Is...

Flip-flop slippers are such a summertime favorite anywhere in the country; sometimes, you wonder if people prefer the summer just for an opportunity to go about nearly barefoot the way flip-flops allow them to. Of course, nature makes sure people never get away with anything they really like. You know what's in store next, don't you?

New research from Alabama shows that flip-flop slippers can be terrible for the health and alignment of your feet and your legs. If you really prefer flip-flops that you wear with straps or thongs, and if you wear them for long enough, you can end up with ankles and feet that are really sore, these researchers are found having studied the biomechanics of feet shot in flip-flops.

What exactly happens with these soft and fun icons of the summer that they can have this kind of effect on you? Studying the biomechanics of how we walk in flip flops, the researchers found that we completely alter our gait when we walk in slippers. Nothing that changes your gait can be good for you; usually, it results in a painful hip and lower back condition, not to mention painful legs.

The study took up several dozen young men and women to study for the effects of flip-flops on human feet. They used techniques that made it possible for them to study their subjects' footfalls so that they could determine the amount of vertical force their feet experienced each time they took a step. They also studied the kinds of angles their subjects positioned their legs and feet when they walked in flip flops. When they compared all of this to the way these very same subjects walked with normal athletic shoes, people who wear flip-flops, seemed to instinctively know that they needed to take short steps and to walk with a great deal more delicateness. People in flip-flop slippers don't even lift their feet as far away from the ground as they walk as people tend to do with well-fitting shoes. The thing is, flip-flop wearers are completely aware that there isn't much that holds their slippers to their feet. To keep their flip-flops from moving around, people tend to curl their feet up a bit and to tightly hold on to their flip-flops with their toes. And they aren't confident moving their feet freely about either because they're afraid their slippers will fall off.

Of course, people love their flip-flops for the kind of freedom they give them. To constantly worry if your footwear is going to fall off doesn't really sound like freedom, now does it?