Beware of the Footwear Police!

More often than not, this change is in the dynamic of what is worn, it is most likely that this is to lead to foot problems. The tissue loading is changed by what is worn on the feet and if tissue is overloaded for a period of time, it will become sore. If it is continually overloaded this may result in an injury of some type that will take longer to settle.

A perfect example of this would be heel pain in the following scenario:

Mr blogs works in an office and is seated 80% of the day, he wears work shoes of dress nature that have a positive pitch or lift in the heel, are reasonably flexible and cover the full area of the foot. He works out at the gym in training shoes 3 mornings a week for half an hour.

He is delighted to leave the office and hit the beach summer, he leaves his shoes at home takes his jandles and heads off to the beach.

Because he has more time, he is more active than usual and enjoys regular long walks along the beach in his jandles and occasionally in barefeet. On the second week of the break he starts to develop a nagging pain in his right heel.

Pain is worse in the morning and very sore after walks .

This is a common scenario of the start of plantar fasciitis we see this in January, February and March each year after.

What has happened is that the elevation in the shoe has been dropped with the jandal and there has been an increase in activity with the walking on a very soft sandy surface.

The take-home message is use your common sense if you're going for a long walk then it's probably a good idea to use more suitable shoes for shorter periods of casual wear candles are likely to be fine for most people.

Stretch your calves and muscles when you increase their use and be realistic with increasing the length of exercise .

We never advised wearing bare feet around town or and shopping areas due to the risk of injury with foreign objects, this is actually relevant for people with diabetes peripheral vascular disease.