Do You Have the Blues When it Comes to Your Shoes?

By Jordie Papa

Image courtesy Public Domain Pictures

Medical professionals work long, hard hours while mostly standing on their feet. This causes many in the medical profession to complain about sore feet and swollen ankles.  Face it, the lowermost extremities are some of the most complicated parts of your body.  With 26 bones, 22 joints and more than a hundred muscles, tendons and ligaments bearing the weight of your entire frame, is it any wonder why the biggest complaint many medical professionals profess is that their dogs ache after their shift is done?

If you routinely experience sore feet, the culprit could be your shoes.  Especially if you buy the cheapest footwear on the shelves, foot strain can be magnified.  Cheap shoes offer little when it comes to arch or ankle support.  The soles and heels of cut-rate shoes do nothing to cushion the repetitive stress your feet have to deal with day in and day out.  This often makes the simple act of walking or standing a form of torture.  As a result, cheap shoes can cause a number of foot ailments, including blisters, bunions, corns, Achilles tendinitis, plantar fasciitis and bone spurs. 

Are Your Shoes at the Root of Your Blues?

The Arch Enemies – Many of the maladies described above are a direct result of shoes with little or no arch support.  When your arches aren’t sufficiently supported, this can cause the muscles of the plantar fascia to become strained.  Poor arch support and shoes with open heels can quickly turn this condition from strain to pain, that can eventually lead to plantar fasciitis.  Should this debilitating condition occur, the road to recovery can be long and hard.  The simple solution is to avoid this condition by wearing shoes with closed heels and an insole with adequate arch support. 

Sole Man

Image courtesy of Uniform Destination

Another culprit that can lead you down the road to foot pain is choosing the wrong soles.  While most people believe that flexible soles provide better support if you spend most of the day on your feet, the opposite is true.  Studies have shown that firm soles are better able to align the ankles and limit the range of motion to which your feet are subjected. If you spend your shift walking on tile floors, you might even want to invest in shoes with rocker-bottom soles.  The rocker-bottom design makes sure that neither the ball of your foot nor your heel impacts the ground.  This reduces strain by equally distributing the pressure along the entire length of the foot instead of concentrating all of it on the heel and toe.

Who are You Calling a Heel?

While high heels have no place on the ward, neither do wafer-thin heels.  Thin heels focus the bulk of your body weight aft, resulting in added strain to both the plantar fascia and calf muscles. Heels of a half inch to an inch help correct this imbalance while cushioning every footfall.  If you constantly complain of sore feet even with adequate arch support, take out a ruler and measure the thickness of your shoe’s heels.

Putting You in a Bind

Another cause of chronic foot pain has to do with pressure.  Wearing shoes that are too tight, cuts off circulation and puts undue strain on your arches.  It’s also the leading cause of blisters, corns and bunions.  On the other hand, wearing shoes that are too big can cause foot cramps, ankle strain and scrunched toes.  Ideally, your shoes should encase your feet without crushing the life out of them or allowing too much wiggle room.  No matter how stylish, if a pair of shoes you’re considering aren’t comfortable the first time you try them on, don’t delude yourself into thinking you’ll break them in.  They could wind up doing you in with every painful step you take. 

Sock It to Me

Uniform Destination

If your ankles are swollen at the end of every shift, this is usually the result of inadequate blood flow.  This can be solved in many cases by wearing compression socks or stockings.  Since the ankles and feet are at the outer limits of the circulatory system, they are the last to get a crack at oxygenated blood.  They also have the hardest time eliminating lactic acid, which can cause soreness and inflammation as it builds up.  The quickest way to correct both these problems is to increase blood supply.  That’s exactly what compression socks and stockings are designed to do. Being tighter at the foot and ankle and looser as they move up the calf, compression socks help the body deal with the force of gravity by causing the femoral artery to dilate while constricting the veins, causing blood to flow faster in the lower extremities.  This combination has been proven to increase blood supply to the lower legs by 30-40%, which moves oxygenated blood and purges lactic acid quicker than nature alone.  If you’re plagued by sore calves, leg cramps or swollen ankles, try donning compression socks or stockings for a week to see if this helps.

Your Foot Soldiers

Walking is like being on a forced march, with the average adult taking between 8,000 to 10,000 steps per day.  That’s a lot of repetitive stress under the best of conditions.  Adding inadequate footwear to the equation is a recipe for disaster.  When it comes to surviving the rigors of a long shift on your feet, you need all the help you can get if you hope to avoid the blues when it comes to your shoes.

Uniform Destination offers a complete selection of shoes and socks designed to help busy medical professionals deal with the strain of standing on their feet all day long.

Jordie Papa is owner of Uniform Destination with four locations in North Florida.