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Healthy Feet: You Have Two Arches on Each Foot.

| Health & Science

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Do You Have Tired or Sore Feet? 
One arch, the one most people refer to, is the longitudinal arch.  This arch runs from the heel to the front of the foot where the toes begin.  This is the arch that most refer to when they say, “You have fallen arches.”  Generally, when there’s a problem with fallen longitudinal arches, it’s necessary to use some sort of support or orthodic in the shoe for better support. 

The other is the transverse arch.  It runs from the inside of the foot at the base of the big toe, to the outside of the foot at the base of little toe.  If this arch begins to “drop” you can experience many problems.  Problems and symptoms connected with a fallen transverse arch include, hammer toes, instability in the ankles, corns and calluses on the bottom of the foot, pain in the foot and ankle.  One may also find they will compensate for the pain in the foot and/or ankle and walk differently.  Many people shuffle or waddle when they walk because of a fallen transverse arch.  Overweight contributes to the problem.  Age and years of overweight exacerbate the condition.  A transverse arch problem can often be diagnosed simply by watching how a person stands, walks and reacts to quick movements.  Back, neck, hip and knee pain, headaches, muscle fatigue and aching joints can all be caused by fallen, or dropped, transverse arch.  Unlike the longitudinal arch problem, a transverse arch responds well to simple exercises.

The exercises require only minimal equipment, a few marbles, a golf ball and a hand towel, and a few minutes two or three times a day. 

We’ll start with the hand towel, since most people have easy access to one. Lay the towel flat on the floor and place your foot on top of the towel.  Next, pull the towel under your foot with the toes.  Use your hand to feel which muscles are the ones doing the pulling.  You should be using the muscles in the foot and not the calf.  If there is fatigue in the calf muscles, you’re using the wrong muscle group.  In order to strengthen and reposition the arch, you need to isolate the muscles in the foot from those in the calf.  Concentrate on relaxing the calf muscles and begin again.  With a little practice, you’ll be able to gather the towel completely under the foot with only minimal use of the calf muscles.
Once you’ve seen progress with that exercise, find a golf ball, it doesn’t matter the condition.  Place the ball on the floor and cup the ball in front of the ball of the foot where the toes attach.  Begin to place pressure on the golf ball, and roll it from side to side.  This is most easily done by pivoting on the heel.  Do not allow the golf ball to go under the longitudinal arch area.  Gradually increasing pressure on the ball will break up old adhesions, strengthen the transverse arch muscles and straighten the toes.  If the ball keeps going off the side of the foot, place it in an old Mason jar ring. 

The next exercise requires a handful of marbles.  Place the marbles on the floor and pick them up one at a time using the toes.  Don’t use the same toe every time, try to pick them up with different toes, concentrating on your weakest toe.  When the marble is off the floor, rotate your foot from side to side and up and down as far as possible.  Rotate your foot as high as it will go, and drop the marble.  Use the entire toe, not just the distal end, to pick up the marble.  With some practice, you’ll find you’ve gained greater flexibility and strength in your feet, calves and ankles and you’ll experience less pain when walking or standing.  Balance and stability depend on the big toe.  Strengthen the toes and you’ll have better balance.

Another exercise that can strengthen the feet and ankle is rolling the foot around on the toes and ball of the foot.  Stand with the feet shoulder width or less apart and shift the weight to one foot.  Bring the un-weighted foot up onto the toes and roll the foot around on the toes and then down onto the ball of the foot and back up on the toes.  Do that for ten repetitions and then reverse the direction.  Switch the weight onto the foot that was exercised, and continue the process on the other foot.   

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About Larry Miller

I was born in Los Angeles in 1940. My father was a fighter pilot instructor during WWll and we moved from coast to coast, maybe that’s where I got the nomad in my blood. After graduating from high school in 1958 I joined the Marines. That lifestyle wasn’t for me and upon my discharge I went on with my life, and have never looked back. I worked briefly for a Caterpillar dealer in Riverside, CA before moving back to N. California where I was a welder and truck driver for a chemical company. Truck driving wasn’t my calling anymore than being in the Marines, and I went back to work for another Caterpillar dealer steam cleaning dirty tractor parts and welding. They sent me to schools, lots and lots of schools. I spent as much time going to trade schools as I did at work. I went from cleaning parts to apprentice field mechanic, to mechanic to the parts department to satellite store manager in less than two years. They wanted me to move to Sacramento and be a salesman: I moved to Oregon to learn to commune with nature. I went to work for another heavy equipment dealer and was later contacted by the World’s largest Lorraine Crane dealer and offered the position of purchasing agent and general parts manager. In 1967 I was offered a line of automotive parts and supplies and went into business for myself. My business revolved around eleven race cars that we maintained for others, driving race cars professionally and maintaining high end sports cars. I was a championship and regional champion driver. My business was the largest import parts and service, non dealer, in the state until I sold it in 1979. We went sailing in 79, first to Mexico and then Hawaii. I was an award winning Trans-Pacific sailor and sailor of the year, Hawaii, Island of Kauai. An opportunity presented itself in Hawaii during 1981 and I was back in business, importing Japanese auto body and hard parts. I also felt the pull to write and began freelancing for magazines and newspapers in 1982. My main focus in my articles is, and always has been, health, wellness and fitness. Most of us have heard the saying, “Time is all we have.” I disagree. Our health is all we have, because without our health, we have no time. I was a US Olympic team hopeful in racewalking and held all the records for the state of Hawaii. As a sponsored athlete in my forties, I finished first in nine marathons in a row in my division, qualified for the Ironman® and was the state USCF cycling champion five times in Hawaii and Oregon. Celinda and I were married in 1988 after a three year engagement. We sold our businesses and organic farm and sailed back to Oregon. After our sailboat boat was sold, we moved to Joseph, Oregon, two miles from the trailhead into the Eagle Cap Wilderness. We were caregivers for my mother the last ten years she was alive. We moved to New Mexico in 1995 because it was too cold for my mom in Oregon during the winters. Celinda designed, and I engineered and built our strawbale house. I began writing the weekly health column for a local newspaper in 1996, and still do. In 2000, I took the summer off to do a four month, 4000 mile, hike, bike and kayak odyssey. I’d been writing health, fitness and sports articles since 1982 and the journey produced a full-length, nonfiction, first person adventure book, Yol Bolsun, May There Be A Road, which can be bought from Amazon.com and others over the Internet. The summer of 2001 was spent hiking. kayaking, fishing and exploring the southwest. In 2002 Celinda and I spent the summer in Canada learning the hospitality business at a resort in preparation for doing promotion for the resort in the US. Most of 2003 was spent reestablishing the trees and landscape that had died during the stay in Canada. We had a house sitter and the house sitter had an ex-husband, and that’s a long story. In July of 2004 I did a solo kayak trip on the Snake River, taking pictures, writing articles and pencil sketching the journey. I hope to do another kayak adventure on the Snake River during the summer of 2008, on the section I missed in 2000 and 2004. In 2005, I returned to Canada to the resort where we’d spent 2002. I was supposed to be there for the month of June. I’d contacted people I’d met in 2002 and they came back to Canada to fish, hike and spend time at the resort, Echo Valley Ranch and Spa, while I was there. My one month became five and then it was off to Spain to do the El Camino de Santiago as a travel companion with one of the guests who’d returned to Canada in June. During the summer of 2006 a friend from Ireland, who I’d met in Spain the year before, came to visit in NM and we fished, hiked and explored the White Mountains of AZ. He’d never slept out in the wild in a tent before, and it was quite an experience, for both of us. My newspaper articles were put on the Internet beginning in 2002. I was asked to give public speaking engagements, photo and video presentations, on various subjects for the library in Deming, NM and continue to do so. In 2006 I videoed and produced a DVD for the Smithsonian Institute’s travel exhibit “Between Fences.” NMFILMS had a conference by invitation only, which I attended. While attending the conference, I realized that film making wasn’t what I wanted to do but I still wanted to use my sixteen years of experience and enjoyment of videoing and photography. During the winter of 2005, I discovered that no one on record had ever run from the Arizona border to the Texas border, a distance of 165 miles. During the spring and summer of 2006 I trained for the run and the run was completed in October, 2006. In late 2005, I began building and maintaining websites incorporating all the things I enjoyed about video, photography, travel and the out of doors. 2007 has been a summer of upgrading the home and property which resulted in a downgrading of my enthusiasm for being located in one place. If we don’t like what’s happening in our life, we need to change what we’re doing. Celinda and I are ready to pull up roots and move on. I guess I’ve come full circle. I’m ready to revert back to my childhood, and a nomadic lifestyle.

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