Are you Stepping Comfortably? How Foot Pain can Impact your Wellbeing

Health experts recommend that we all exercise for 30 minutes, three times a week. This can be from taking a leisurely walk to boosting your cardiovascular fitness with running or through taking a spinning class. Whatever way you decide to exercise, there is nothing that can slow down your exercise plans quite like having foot pain.

From painful arches to ingrown toenails, there seems like there is no shortage of common foot complaints – and suffering from these can impact your wellbeing as you are not able to exercise as frequently as you would like, with some conditions meaning that you can’t exercise at all.  Here are just a few common foot complaints, and what you can do to remedy them to get back on track with your exercise regime…

Plantar Fasciitis
Despite being a common foot condition, many people dismiss this as mere foot pain. Plantar Fasciitis is caused through a number of factors such as not wearing supportive shoes or through our own biomechanical flaws including having flat feet. This condition sees the inflammation of the band of tissue, the plantar fascia, which runs across the bottom of the foot – resulting in a sharp pain whenever you run or place pressure on the foot. The key to easing the pain of Plantar Fasciitis and treating the condition is to choose footwear that supports the arch of the foot. Shoes such as Vionic footwear use innovative technology – this evenly distributes weight across the foot, so that the arch does not have a build-up of pressure.  This unique technology is also beneficial in realigning the heel, feet that have an unnatural heel position can also be susceptible to foot pain as well as pain in the lower legs and back.

Diabetes
If you suffer from diabetes, your feet are of particular risk to a range of foot conditions. If you have diabetes you have an increased risk of damage to the feet, and may find that you are quite vulnerable to common foot complaints such as bunions, fungal infections, corns, dry skin and blisters. The best form of protection against such conditions is prevention. Wide fit shoes such as Comfort shoes for women offer a spacious fit for the diabetic foot – a wide fit shoe can help to reduce complaints such as blistering and bunions while it is important to regularly check the foot for fungal conditions.

Ingrown toenails
A foot complaint that can affect us all is ingrown toenails. This is particular uncomfortable when you run or walk, ingrown toenails occur when the toenail grows into the skin that surrounds the nail – making the area red and sore. Badly-cut toenails along with tight shoes are mainly to blame for this condition, it can be easily avoided through wearing the correct size footwear and through cutting your nails straight across to ensure that they grow normally.

Athlete’s Foot
A common fungal infection, athlete’s foot is an itchy scaly rash– if left untreated, this can spread to hands or to other parts of the body such as the face. Caused by keeping feet in damp, airless environments such as in running shoes, maintaining good hygiene is the best way of preventing this unpleasant foot rash. Anti-fungal creams and sprays can also be used to help speed up the treatment of Athlete’s foot, it is advisable to continue using these products even when the condition is no longer visible as the foot can still be infected.