MD Podiatrist Stresses the Importance of Exercises to Keep Feet Strong

About one quarter of our bones are in our feet. How can you keep them strong and pain-free for longer? Dentists have trained us well to visit them on a regular basis for a check-up, rather than waiting until things start to hurt. Dan Michaels, DPM, wishes we’d do the same for our feet. “We probably ignore our feet relative to other parts of our body, because we stick them in shoes and they’re a long way away, so we tend to forget about feet,” he says. “It’s only really when they don’t actually function properly – so when they become painful, they don’t do what we want them to do – that we really think about them.”

Our entire body weight rests on the soles of our feet, so maintaining a healthy weight is an important part of looking after our feet. It’s not just for mechanical reasons but also metabolic, Dr. Michaels says. “There’s really good evidence now that adipose tissue – fat tissue – is active stuff, so it tends to become activated on nerve endings, so there’s a really strong connection between foot pain and being overweight,” he says. “There’s lots of benefits to having a healthy body weight, and one of the benefits is you’re far less likely to get foot pain.” We spend so much time on our feet yet rarely think of them as a body part that needs exercising. But there are some foot exercises that can help maintain the big and small muscles in the foot that are critical for balance and movement.