If the Shoe Fits

You owe your feet an apology. These days of going the extra mile and walking the talk are taking a toll on your feet, especially if you wear shoes that don’t fit.

Unfortunately, many people think foot pain is unavoidable or a necessary side effect of good fashion sense. Most people will have foot problems at some point—anything from blisters to bunions. But they’re generally victims of their own bad choices, not just fashion.

Tracy Anderson, now a real estate agent for Edina Realty, vividly remembers a day about eight years ago when she was walking through downtown Minneapolis in a pair of her favorite high-heeled boots. Her heel got caught in a crack in the sidewalk and she twisted her ankle.

“I knew it hurt, but I just kind of went about my business,” she says. “I ignored it until I got home and tried to remove the boot. My foot was so swollen at that point, it was hard to get the boot off.”

She was accustomed to foot pain from being on her feet for 10 hours a day at trade shows in business attire and high-heeled shoes: “My feet would throb at the end of the day, and I’d walk back to the hotel barefoot.” Even so, she decided that her twisted ankle merited a trip to the podiatrist the very next day. Good thing.

Time Heals, Mostly

Anderson’s podiatrist—a doctor with extra training in neurological, circulatory, skin, and musculoskeletal systems of the foot and lower leg—told her she had a severe sprain in her ankle and a hairline fracture in her foot. When her boot stuck in the sidewalk, she had overstretched a ligament—one of the tough bands of fibers that connect bones and cartilage in the ankle and other joints. The most commonly damaged ligament in the foot is the talo-fibula, which stretches along the outside of each foot and connects to the ankle bone. In all, the foot has more than 100 tendons, ligaments, and muscles, 26 bones, and 33 joints. That’s a lot of moving parts, and it can take a long time for these interconnected systems to heal, because your feet are always in use.

Although Anderson saw her doctor the day after her accident, most people with foot injuries or problems don’t follow up as quickly. “The majority of the time when people come in, they’ve had a problem for quite some time,” says Dr. Jeff Pellersels, a podiatric surgeon and owner of the Twin Cities–based Foot and Ankle Clinics. “Most people just think it’s going to get better on its own. A lot of the time it does. Things do improve over time. The body has a great ability to heal itself.” But he cautions that the foot heals more slowly than other body parts because, “we’re using it every single day. We’re putting all of our weight on it. And some injuries just don’t respond to time. Sometimes they require a little extra care to heal.”

Anderson’s injury required her to wear a clunky stabilizing boot—not her style. “I just remember thinking it was miserable. And definitely not very fashionable,” she says. But she knew she would need to forgo fashion—at least in the short term—if she ever wanted to indulge in it again.