Your Feet: Balance Begins Here

Here are some sobering statistics:

• 30% of people aged 65 to74 fall at least once a year.

• Those aged 75 and older increases to 40%.

• There were 8 million fall related injuries that required treatment in ER’s, urgent cares or physician offices in 2018.

• Falls Caused 36,000 deaths in people 65 or older in 2020.

• It’s estimated that by 2030 there will be over 50 million falls per year with over 12 million injuries.

Not a pretty picture to say the least. Factors that influence the current situation and future trends include an aging population, reduced levels of physical activity and balance training strategies that fail to take into consideration a human being's anatomy and function. The subject of today’s post is the latter. More specifically our feet and how they function in movement and balance. Our feet are our primary contact with the world we navigate in with our hands coming at second place. To get from point A to point B without the use of machinery we walk most of the time. Our feet are composed of roughly 26 bones, 33 joints and 100 muscles, tendons and ligaments combined. Our feet are designed to move. You’ve probably heard of many stories where a person who was born with or lost the use of their hands has adapted by using their feet to accomplish many of the same tasks as their hands. That’s how much they are designed to move and be manipulated. They also contain the second most concentration of sensory nerves in our bodies. Second only to our hands. This allows our brain and nervous system to get an accurate picture of where our body is in relationship to the ground when we are upright and moving. The ability of our feet to move in so many precise ways enable rapid adaptation to change in the surface we are navigating. These adaptations require feedback from sensing the changes in the surface and changes in joint and body positions in our foot and ankle. The main objective being to keep us preventing falls which create injuries. When we lack this feedback the risk of falling increases. For a variety of factors which will be the subject of future posts, our feet are not moving the way they were designed. These include physical changes to our feet like calluses, bunions, hammer toe, plantar fasciitis, neuropathy and other assorted ailments and injuries. Most of which are preventable. The common denominator in most of these conditions is footwear. Yes, the shoes that you wear. Most shoes aren’t designed and built in a way that honors the structure and function of our feet. We’ll save that for our next post. Until then, I look forward to any questions you might have regarding your feet and how they impact your ability to stay balanced and upright. You can contact me by phone at 970 412 0355 or email at gift_of_movement@msn.com with your questions or to schedule your complementary consultation. Let’s get you moving safely and pain free.