April marks a month of more activity and beautiful blooming tulips, but it also marks the beginning of Foot Awareness Month. What is foot awareness? You can be more in tune with not only your overall body health but look down and make sure your feet are healthy and well. The foot is a body part that 98% of people tend to neglect.
Often our feet are the window into our souls, and they can tell you a lot about your overall health and well-being. Here are some Nashville Podiatrist-approved recommendations to keep your feet and health in check.
• Make sure to look down and inspect your feet daily! This tip seems so simple, but people do not do this often. Make sure you are looking at the top and bottom of your feet and drying in between your toes after baths or showers. Also, make sure to moisturize the skin on foot daily. The humidity and weather changes can cause calluses and cracks in your feet. Not to mention skin fungus is everywhere, and they love warm, moist dry skin and nails to infest.
• Make sure to adequately put sunscreen on the top of your feet while wearing sandals or flip-flops. The skin on the foot is very susceptible to skin cancers found on the rest of your body.
• Make sure you adequately hydrate and drink the recommended 4-6 glasses of water a day. Your skin is the largest organ of your body, and keeping it hydrated and healthy is not an option.
• Making you sure you wear appropriate fitting shoes and sandals. Again, this seems logical, but frequently wearing ill-fitting shoes or no shoes at all overtime is what causes the ugly bunion or hammertoe deformities to develop slowly. We will be writing more blogs giving you our best recommendations for sandals, walking and running shoes, and hiking boots. Stay tuned for that!
• Stretching and massaging. We dislike or never do one, and the other is something I wouldn’t mind daily. As the weather starts to warm up, we know we all become more active, whether it is starting a new walking or fitness routine or deciding to do a massive hike. We encourage you to go out and get mobile! However, preparing your legs and feet to do those activities is just as important.
The exceptional podiatrists at Cutting Edge Foot and Ankle provide the most up-to-date surgical and non-surgical treatment recommendations for all of your foot and ankle pain. They value education and have a passion for educating their patients to help prevent foot and ankle pain before it happens. Please make an appointment today at one of our four Nashville locations by clicking here https://www.cefootandankle.com/book-an-appointment/ or call 615-866-9639
