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Health and Fitness
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Health and Fitness
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Keeping your feet healthy
Keeping your feet healthy
The Calgary Foot Institute is dedicated to the medical and surgical treatment of the foot. The mandate is to provide the best possible medical, surgical and preventative treatment available for the patients. The experts perform this by providing well-trained Doctors who are committed to treat and prevent all types of foot pain, bio-mechanical disorders, as well as all other problems relating to the feet.
Calgary,
Alberta,
Canada
(prbd.net)
06/01/2012
To state the obvious our feet are essential to our own mobility, Sure we all get around in cars, on motorbikes and scooters and even horses but most critical are our feet. Because we are an evolved species, now walking upright our feet are that part of us that bear the brunt of the pounding that we give them each day as we move about.
The Zulu king, Shaka, trained his warriors to run barefoot no matter what the terrain. His "impi" could and did effectively run barefoot across the African bush for up to 50 miles in a day and still fight and win a battle. Often they ran home the next day. On the other hand most armies had become used to footwear, notably the Egyptian, Greek, Trojan and Roman armies all had sandals on their feet. It is notable that one of the reasons that General Lee marched his army to Gettysburg was in the hope of capturing some footwear, as a lot of his soldiers were either unshod or had only worn out boots.
Even in today's armies a great deal of care is taken with the soldier's feet. Fresh socks and spare boots travel with the quartermasters, Foot inspection is fairly regular. (There is a vignette of this in the movie "We were Soldiers" which is as true a portrait as you are likely to see, ask any ex serviceman)
There are any number of health issues to do with ones feet that may need treatment. A great many of the common foot problems are caused by being overweight. Those Zulu warriors mentioned above were all extremely fit and carried no extra weight Their equipment was a spear and shield. Modern boots for the army are far better designed and able to take the constant shock of a soldier plus his kit and arms adding an additional 25% to his normal weight.
But in today's world a great many people are overweight, and the problem is getting worse. So the foot, which was basically originally designed to be part of a 4 way load sharing is now meant to cope with a good deal more, and may start to develop problems; Corns, bunions and spurs are common and all are exacerbated by the body being too heavy.
Another factor is often the choice of footwear. As mentioned above when discussing military footwear the services wants its personnel to have healthy feet and comfortable footwear in which they can walk for miles and miles. But the Fashion industry often dictates something else, that neither supports the foot properly or crushes the toes and rubs against the heel. Women especially are subject to the whims of a designer who is concerned with looks and does not care a whit about foot health.
In a counter to all this the Calgary podiatrist is here to assist patients with their problems. Whether the problem is a fungal infection, such as athletes foot, or bunions and spurs and in growing toenails a podiatrist is a specialist to nurse your feet back to full health.
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