The human body is often referred to as the greatest machine ever invented. It is such a complex and fascinating structure that scientists could study it forever and still make new discoveries. While every part of the body brings with it its own sense of fascination, the feet are unique in that they support the body and play the most important role in its movement. Here we explain the feet in greater detail so that you can begin to understand your foot pain that bit more.
Bones
Starting with your bones and skeleton, as we know the foot has five toes, an ankle, a heel and the foot itself. With the leg also joining to the foot at the ankle, we can see that the foot has many joints that facilitate for the movement of walking. While every bone in our body is used in some way, can you imagine how much use the bones in our feet are subject to when a person walks an average of 10,000 steps a day?
Muscles + Tendons
Covering the bones then is the equally numerous network of interlinking muscles and tendons. These fleshy components can stretch and tighten when needed when walking and running and together with the bones they help to hold everything together. Such is their importance that an injury or condition that affects these (such as Achilles tendonitis) can inhibit how you walk and cause you to limp as putting your foot to the floor can cause pain.
Veins
The next layer up from the muscles and tendons are the veins that bring a blood flow to your feet. While these envelop the foot, they also concentrate and segment out into five separate branches – once for each toe. This can be why the pain is so intense and immediate when you stub your big toe or if you are unfortunate enough to have something heavy fall onto your foot/feet.
Skin
The skin then covers each of these previous three parts and acts as a protective and filtering barrier from the outside world.
Now that we can see and begin to understand the physical makeup of the human foot, it becomes apparent that foot pain is a condition that affects a crucial and complex system of the human body. As it negatively affects your movement and comfort, we highly recommend that you visit a Chartered Physiotherapist if you are experiencing any type of foot pain whether caused by a physical injury or a condition that develops over time or has a sudden onset. At PhysioCare, our aim is to help you get and feel better by utilising various treatment methods such as physiotherapy itself, massage treatment, shockwave therapy and even the prescription of orthotics if needed.