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Matthew Godwin

Your feet are amazing, this is why!

Today marks the start of foot health week (April 22nd – April 26th), the perfect time to do my first blog. The first topic I am going to blog on is to highlight how amazing our feet are and why we need to look after them. A common phrase I hear when treating patients is how they didn’t appreciate their feet until they started getting pain or issues from them. This is largely true and I think a big reason for this is they are “Out of sight so out of mind”, they are usually hidden by our socks/slippers/footwear. But when we do start getting an issue with them such as an ingrown toenail, painful corns, a muscular issues such as heel pain then it can quickly become debilitating and it can have a big effect on our emotional wellbeing and mental health as well as physical health.



I will do future blogs on maintaining foot health and how we can help with any issues at North Devon Footcare, but here are some facts about our feet and why they are so important to us and our overall health:


1)Each foot contains 26 bones with the Calcaneus (Heel bone) being the largest and strongest in the foot. With 52 bones in our feet in total this means that over a quarter of the bodies bones are situated within the feet.


2)Each foot has 33 joints, with over 100 soft tissue structures in tendons, muscles and ligaments to help keep the foot flexible but also robust and strong. This is needed as double your body weight pass through the big toe joint every step.


3)It takes on average about 6 months for a new toe nail to grow from the base to tip. This is twice as long as a fingernail, although this will vary from person to person.


4)There are over 250,000 sweat glands located in your feet and they sweat out about half a pint of sweat a day.


5)It is estimated that about half the population has an infectious foot condition, which includes conditions such as fungal nail or a verruca.


6)By the age of one, our feet have already grown to half their adult size, although the bones in our feet are not fully developed until we are about 18. In general our feet get bigger as we get older.


7)The average person takes 8000-10000 steps a day, this means you walk about 115000 miles in your lifetime, which is the equivalent of going round the world 4 times, that’s a lot of miles.


8) There are approximately 200000 nerve endings in each foot, these send vital sensory information to the brain and aiding in keeping your balance.


9) In an average days walking, your feet would have had hundreds of tonnes of force go through them, the equivalent of a fully loaded cement lorry or 2 elephants!


Lots of force goes through your feet with each step!


10) Each foot is slightly different in size and our feet are at their largest at the end of the day. Something to consider when choosing footwear!


Later in the week we will giving some foot care advice and tips. In the meantime, if you have any foot pain or foot health concerns you can book an appointment with North Devon Footcare by ringing 01271 533020 or you can book online




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