BLOG - REGULAR BLOG BY JANET McGROGGAN - PRINCIPAL PODIATRIST 

Posts from August 2018

Why, oh, why do we have foot problems? I mean aren’t we just doing what nature intended? Your gait is as unique as your fingerprint.  
 
We do not all walk about perfectly upright, arms swinging symmetrically at our sides, head forward like the synths in Humans. Just stop in your main street or my personal favourite, the airport and look around you. Limps, striding, sloping… just look at this guy  
But what is the root of it all? Why the individuality? This is not an exhaustive list, but a taster, and some lucky people will never have a problem, but a recent survey found that 66% of people in the UK say that foot or lower leg pain has stopped them from exercising at some point. 
Let’s face it, sometimes feet are not great at being feet. They get lumps and bumps, limps and pains.  
 
Why? Well at the end of the day the way we, humans, stand upright, stacking our leg bones perpendicular to our foot bones and our pelvis, spine and head on top of that.  
 
Also, in western society, we shove them into man made, often unstructured, footwear and walk on flat hard surfaces like concrete or wooden panels, also man made. 
 
But isn’t that what feet are for? 
 
Ultimately feet like the rest of our bodies have evolved from chimpanzee like ancestors. Our closest living ancestors are bonobo apes. 
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