Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Our Feet

Those of you who already know me, also know that I like feet. Not just my own, but also my clients. That´s simply because everything starts there. Feet are like a basement of a house and you sure want to have a firm, healthy and stable base to built your house on.

Here is some facts (http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/picture-of-the-feet):

The feet are flexible structures of bones, joints, muscles, and soft tissues that let us stand upright and perform activities like walking, running, and jumping. The feet are divided into three sections:
  • The forefoot contains the five toes (phalanges) and the five longer bones (metatarsals).
  • The midfoot is a pyramid-like collection of bones that form the arches of the feet. These include the three cuneiform bones, the cuboid bone, and the navicular bone.
  • The hindfoot forms the heel and ankle. The talus bone supports the leg bones (tibia and fibula), forming the ankle. The calcaneus (heel bone) is the largest bone in the foot.
Muscles, tendons, and ligaments run along the surfaces of the feet, allowing the complex movements needed for motion and balance. The Achilles tendon connects the heel to the calf muscle and is essential for running, jumping, and standing on the toes.

 My job is to make sure that each and every one of those joints are movable, muscles and soft tissues are flexible and there is no ischemia. What does that mean?

In my treatment I will check all the joints between each parts of toes, toes and metatarsals, between metatarsals, between cuneiform and cuboid, between cuboid and navicular etc, you get the picture. Sometimes the muscles and tendons are so tight that the first session goes on more superficial (soft tissues) work, since a big part of the picture are muscles of the shins (peroneals, tibialisis, soleus and gastrocnemius) and only in the second session we can try to move those ligaments to open the joints.

Opening the joints is essential because we want all the nervous tissue be free of any kind of impingement and discomfort. Is it painful? Definitely no, if it's done in a right way. When I am opening your joints, it happens with time and you probably don't even feel it. If we have more stubborn foot, I might ask you to flex and extend your ankle, so that you are always in charge of the movement. That is if I have a slightest idea that my work would give you any pain.

Why you want your feet to be flexible? Because that is how they are meant to be to keep you going. If we wouldn't need the flexibility all those joints give us, we wouldn't have that many joints in our feet!

Most of you have also heard about Reflexology, that addresses all the pressure points at the souls of the feet to help in a huge variety of issues. And yes, I do some reflexology, but that is not my specialty or the field where I am in my most comfort zone. In my believe, you can't get all the benefits of reflexology if you feet lack blood, are swollen or immovable. If the signal from the brain (like keep your feet warm) can't reach the feet, how can the signal from the feet (reflexology) make it's way to a different parts of the body? At least the reflexology session is much more helpful to you if your feet are healthy.

Okay, I will not start to explain about how an imbalance in one ankle affect to the knees and hips etc. You can read about that in my other blog posts (About Posture, More about Soft Tissues) . But what I want to tell you, is that I am able to help you so many issues with your feet: plantar fasciitis, bunions(!), rheumatoid arthritis to a certain point, achilles tendon issues, edema, calluses(!), corns, heal spurs, fallen arches, mallet toes and claw toes (depending on situation) and sometimes even in Morton's neuroma. My treatment is helpful also in cold feet or even peripheral artery disease and peripheral neuropathy if it is supervised by a medical doctor.

Unfortunately I can not help you, if you have gout, fraction, any kind of infection or osteoarthritis or osteoporosis (unless your doctor is working with us). I also need to know and be prepared, if you have warts, athlete's foot or any other kind of fungal infection.

And if you don't have anything special going on with your feet, just come and relax. I know some relaxation techniques that make you sleep in my table.

Loving your feet is healthy!