We’ve had an unintentional experiment underway in our household for quite a while now. It all relates to foot pain and shoes. It started with my husband saying his feet were sore and my suggestion for him to look into getting fitted for shoes that addressed the shape of his feet. He went to my favorite running store with me and was told he had very flat feet. This much we knew because there was no arch to be seen when he wasn’t wearing shoes. He selected the same shoe he had been wearing already, but this version of the shoe gave him more support.
He liked the shoes. They made his feet hurt less. They were comfortable. Good news there. That was two or three pair of shoes back. Hold on that story for a minute though and let me side track to my story. I have fairly easy, happy feet. I had to figure out which running shoes worked best for me, but otherwise, I can wear any type of shoe and be comfortable in them (aside from high heels, which are the scourge of womanhood if you ask me).
My husband and I were going along just fine when—and this is something we’ve pieced together in retrospect now—he started to have foot discomfort when he got up in the mornings. This continued on and off for some time, mostly in the mornings when he got up as tightness in his feet. It presented like the beginnings of plantar fasciitis, which was odd and unexpected. It got a little worse over time and got mildly annoying to him and worrisome because was it going to get worse, and if so, how?
Back to my story, which took a turn when I got a really neat-o pair of shoes from the company Hoka. These shoes are great running shoes and tout a big, comfy support base on which to run. I jokingly said it was like running on a marshmallow. I liked the shoes a lot but they caused me mild shin splints when I ran so I stopped running with them, favoring my other shoes. What I did do was wear them around all the time because if they were comfortable to run in, imagine how comfortable they’d be to walk in all day long?
And then something strange happened, that I didn’t expect. I started having tightness pains in my feet when I got up in the morning. It took a while to come on (months) and it was not that big of an issue because it only lasted for a short while; but like my husband, I wondered why was it happening at all.
After a few more months I started noticing a pattern though: wearing the Hokas more seemed to ramp up the morning tightness. Could it be? I was seriously skeptical because I loved my Hokas, but I felt it was worthwhile stopping wearing them for a while to get a good test sample. Two months later and the discomfort was almost non-existent. Then, I transitioned to winter boots instead of sneakers, which have absolutely no support, and the morning tightness went completely and quickly away.
My husband and I had been in conversations about our observations and had figured out that while his feet weren’t sore at the end of the day as much any more, he did think the shoes with more support may have been the start of the early signs of plantar fasciitis in his feet. As a test, several weeks ago he stopped wearing his the sneakers with the specific support for his flat feet and went back to footwear he’s had for many years that had little or no arch support. And guess what? His feet are feeling better and better.
So what is going on here? I don’t know about everyone else out there, I only have a test bed of two subjects, but it seems at our age the there is such a thing as too much foot support. Whatever the case may be, I’m not arguing with less foot pain.
The Big Boy Update: My son was very excitedly playing with my neighbor’s children tonight at dinner. I think he was trying to impress one of their girls but I’m not sure he was going in the right direction when he said, “I’ve bit my brain before.”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My husband and I notice a continued decline in my daughter’s vision. Weather or not the right eye is healing/improving is not something she can take advantage of visually yet because she has no corrective lens in her eye. That means what she’s getting from the left eye is what she’s getting and that seems to be less and less. What scares us more is how her personality seems to be changing, how she seems to be more shy, more introverted, more focused on playing games with herself because she can’t interact with her peers as easily now. We are hoping for some good information on February 1st and likely surgery on the left eye to bolster it and return some of that vision while the right eye continues to heal.
Fitness Update: We ran two-ish miles this morning until it began to do some rainy sleety thing so we went to the fitness room. My thighs are in a world of pain after the trail runs yesterday. My neighbor seems to be less-affected, but she does a lot of additional training to support that kind of run with the trainer I haven’t been going to in some time.
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