Foot Fun – Weird Things You Never Knew or Forgotten

How many of these facts do you know remember about your feet?

Fun Foot Facts – Foot Anatomy

Each of our feet contain 26 bones – which accounts for 1/4 of the bones in our entire body. When these bones are out of alignment, so is the rest of the body.

It’s also interesting that there are 26 vertebrae in our spine which is the same number of bones that is in each foot.

There are 33 joints, 107 ligaments, 19 muscles and tendons in each foot.

Each foot has approximately 125,000 sweat glands. This means that the average person can produce up to 22 liters of sweat in just one shoe, every year!

The skin on the sole of your foot can be up to 20 times as thick as the rest of the skin on your body.

One of the reasons that feet are so ticklish is because there are more sensory nerve endings per inch than in any other place on the body.

Your feet mirror your general health. Conditions such as arthritis, diabetes, nerve and circulatory disorders can show their initial symptoms in the feet – issues that show up in your feet can be your first sign of more serious medical problems.

Development of Feet

In the womb, babies start developing their feet and hands at about the eighth week of pregnancy. At first, they look like paddles and then around the sixth or seventh month the paddle splits up forming the fingers and toes.

A child also does not develop arches in their feet until they are between two and three years old when they learn to walk on their own.

The arch of the foot supports and takes the shock from the weight of the rest of the body. I find it very interesting that in our lives as babies, when we are totally dependent on our caregivers to feed us, change us and carry us around, we do not have arches. It is only after we start to stand on our own and become more independent that we start to form arches in our feet.

The arches have great meaning

• Shows us the amount of support and backing we have or do not have in our lives
• Allows us to stand up for ourselves and make a stand for what is important
• Shows the amount of flexibility we have for ourselves as individuals

Tip: Why I don’t buy shoes in the morning?

During the day our feet will swell somewhere between 5%-8% from when we get up in the morning, until when we kick our feet up at night. This means that our shoes size may change between 1/2 and 1 full size. A good rule of thumb is to shop for shoes starting mid afternoon when our feet are well into the day.

Wishing you a spring in each step you take!

Yours warmly,

Adam C.O. Thomas of balancingtouch.ca