You use them daily. You walk to and from your home, office, school and anywhere else you venture. Doing just a few things to maintain the health of your feet can really pay off in the long run. Ever have pain in your feet? ankles? How about your knees or back? neck pain? Believe it or not any of these areas in your body can experience pain if your feet health and anatomy isn’t properly maintained.
The job of your feet is to carry your spiritual meat suit (aka: your body) around. They deal with the constant pressure and stress caused by the entire weight of your body weighing and bending them daily. Integrating these 5 tips below into your routine here and there will help your feet stay healthier, reduce the chance of pain in your body and keep your more healthy in general.
Although your feet seem quite simple from looking at them, they are actually quite complex than you’d think.
Your foot contains 26 bones, 33 joints, more than 100 tendons, muscles, and ligaments, and an incredible 250,000 sweat glands? Your feet also contain over 7,000 nerve endings in each foot. Over 14,000 total nerve endings with both feet combined.
Your feet are incredibly complex parts of your entire anatomy. Remember, they carry your entire body around. That’s a lot of weight, pressure and flexibility needed. You may find that by trying any one or few of the ideas below that your feet will feel stronger, more relaxed and more flexible. This may benefit any slight discomfort, tension or pain in your body.
For me personally I experienced incredibly bad knee pain at the young age of 19 years old simply because the shoes (nike brand shoes) and insoles in my shoes that I wore were causing my knees to not align properly. At the time my job required me to walk on average about 5 miles each day. This lead to constant knee pain with each and every step. If you’re experiencing any pain in your body I highly recommend paying attention to #5 below. Choosing shoes that support your anatomy, feet health and strength are very important.
5 Ways To Keep Your Feet Healthy Naturally
- Walk Barefoot More Often:One of the biggest mishaps humanity has encountered since day one is we have “evolved” into thinking we need all of humanity’s creations in order to be complete. Walking barefoot offers many benefits. First, your feet are exposed to the elements. With more than 7,000 nerve endings in each foot (over 14,000 in total from both feet) your feet and body are stimulated by these nerves. Walking barefoot strengthens your feet and ankles, stimulates your nerves which keep your body and nervous system engaged and more effective.Walking barefoot also allows your body to electromagnetically soak up negative electrons from the earth’s ionosphere field. This “grounding” (literally) is known as grounding or earthing. This barefoot connection to the earth is great for your nervous system, your blood and more. This can improve sleep and invoke an overall feeling of relaxation and peace in the body.
- Clip Nails & Clean Skin (cuticles):This tip may be more for men than it is for women. Us men typically ignore our feet completely. The nails and cuticles (skin that can grow over your nails) needs to be cut off. Ignoring this can lead to ingrown toenails which can cause a lot of pain and even lead you to the emergency room. Simply cutting your nails and pulling your skin on your toes to the side to cut is important. This will ensure your nails do not grow into your skin.You can take almond oil, coconut oil or olive oil and apply those topically to your nails and the overgrown cuticle skin. Then take CPTG lavender essential oil (found here) and apply a few drops to your toe and nail. Massage the oil mixed with the lavender essential oil into your toe and skin to soften the cuticles so you can cut it off. This ingrown skin can cause many problems. Nails or cuticles that grow into your skin can cause your toe infections, bacteria buildup, sweat buildup, bad odor and ultimately lead to many more issues. Just cut your nails and cuticles and keep them up to par! It may even help you get a date
- Take A Foot Bath:Do you remember when foot baths first came out? Everyone had their version of the best foot bath on the market in stores. Foot baths with foot massages. Foot baths with water flowing in different directions. You name it, it exists! You don’t need a fancy foot bath product in order to enjoy a relaxing foot bath. A foot bath is quite simple, it’s just a bath for your feet.You can take a big popcorn sized bowl and make that your foot bath bowl. Simply put hot water (preferably purified/filtered) into the bowl and add a few cups of epsom salt. Sit down, relax and watch your favorite tv show! Epsom salt is a rich source of the mineral magnesium as well as sulfur. Both of these minerals are relaxing and rejuvenating. Magnesium relaxes the nerves and blood as well as the skin. Sulfur helps to keep the nails and skin healthy on your feet.You can also add a few drops of your favorite essential oil to add the benefits of aromatherapy. Personally I like using eucalyptus or lavender on my feet. These are both relaxing, calming and make the skin feel great.
- Massage Your Feet:Give your feet love! YES! How often do you touch your feet? Let’s get sensual? no? yes! try it. I went for years without barely touching my feet and one day I decided to massage my feet and it was life changing. It was as if God himself opened the skies to the heavens and basked glorious new feet on my legs.It’s incredibly relaxing, balancing, grounding and helps to calm and relax your entire nervous system. Remember the 7,000 nerve endings on each foot? Those are points that allow you to massage the nervous system of your entire body. Want your back, neck and legs to feel calmer and more relaxed? Massage your feet! or walk barefoot in the sand or rocks.Stimulating the entire foot and nerves that are in your feet allow you to feel comfortable, relaxed and help to rejuvenate your entire body. It’s entirely worth it. I recommend massaging with coconut oil and adding a few drops of your favorite essential oil. Once again lavender and eucalyptus are both great. Giving yourself or your partner a foot massage is also a great way to express self-love or love for your partner. Nothing says I love you more than digging into those dirty feet with a whole lot of love!
- Make Better Shoe Choices:Remember when I said that I had horrible knee pain at 19 years old. It at the time felt like it was because of my job. Walking 5-7 miles a day is a bit of walking but at my age at the time it wasn’t too exhausting. I could handle it quite easily. I later realized when doing research online and simply looking at the shoes and insoles I was wearing that it was my fault.My nike shoes and insoles where pushing the inner part of my foot higher than the outside. This caused my knees (on the inside) to be pushed higher than the outside. When looking at my knees and the inflexibility and pain that came from it I realized that it correlated directly with the shoe and insole angle. It simply harmed my knees that entire year, wearing and grinding the cartilage down.Thanks to researching online, using common sense and the education I had learned while working at a shoe store (that sold these insoles oddly enough) I came to learn that the shoes you wear are very important. They can cause misalignment in the legs that lead to knee or back pain.
Your feet do what they do on a flat surface. I now wear Lems Shoes (found at LemsShoes.com, click here to visit them) almost exclusively. These shoes are zero drop shoes and also have more toe room to allow your toes to be strong and flexible as opposed to crunched in (like Nike, or other major brands) which is better for your health and foot strength. These two differences allow for your foot to be healthier and stronger which does a better job at preventing knee or back pain, better than any other shoe or insole on the market.
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