With flat feet, the load extends to the hip joints, spine and head. Over time, these organs undergo negative changes. When the spine is deformed, the posture is disturbed, scoliosis appears, and then the osteochondrosis, the joints of the legs undergo changes.
Most often the disease makes itself felt by the pain and rapid fatigue of the legs after walking or other exercise. By the evening, the feet can become slightly swollen and heavy. There may be unreasonable headaches after a tiring walk or a long standing on your feet. Over time, the foot increases in length and breadth, painful bones can appear, habitual shoes become tight and uncomfortable. The diagnosis can be put and most, it is enough only to look at the shoes of a person: it is strongly deformed and worn out from the inside.
Flattening can be congenital, about 3% of people get this disease as an inheritance. Most often, doctors have to face the acquired flat feet.
The cause of flat feet in children may be a number of diseases; rickets and poliomyelitis, the cause of the disease may be the wrong shoes. According to medical statistics, women suffer from flat feet four times more often than men. Risk factors are pregnancy, overweight, high-heeled walking, long standing on the feet, diabetes mellitus.
With the beginning of flatfoot, you can get by wearing shoes with special insoles, supinators, massage and physiotherapy procedures. Supinators are used not only for the treatment of flat feet, but also for its prevention. All high-quality footwear, especially children's, is supplied with insteps. Usually the arch supports are made to order, on individual foot impressions. Supinators are enough to wear for several hours a day for a couple of months - it all depends on the degree of disruption. The doctor will tell you if you need special medical insteps. With severe pain you have to resort to tablets. In some cases, when the deformation of the foot is strongly pronounced and walking becomes a real torture, it is necessary to resort to surgical intervention. Then surgeons - orthopedists remove some bones on the foot, restoring its normal shape.
Prevention of the disease must begin with the very infancy. An important role is played by the choice of footwear: it should not be cramped and not too spacious, have a flexible but not thin sole. Strengthening the muscles of the feet is promoted by gymnastics and playing sports. In summer it is useful to walk barefoot on sand and uneven soil. This causes a protective reflex, sparing the arch of the foot and prevents the appearance or progression of flatfoot. Recommended daily warm baths to the knees, massage the muscles of the foot. Easy massage is not only pleasant, but also useful.
If by nature you are always on your feet, buy shoes on a thick and soft soles. For women working standing, shoes with an open toe are recommended, so that the feet are well ventilated, or with a cloth top that covers the ankles. In this case, the heels should not exceed 4 cm. During a free moment, you need to rest while sitting, raise your legs higher, make several circular movements with your feet to the right and to the left. Also during the day you need to stand on the outside of the feet, fixing this position for 30-40s.
Scientists have long wondered why such a disease as flat feet began to hit people, only with the development of civilization? After all, ancient people also walked on two legs, and their body weight was distributed in the same way as our contemporaries. However, scientific evidence suggests that flat feet did not develop in those days. Now the explanation of the riddle is found - the ancients walked barefoot on the ground, grass, small pebbles. The shallow soil gave additional footsteps to the feet, and small irregularities of the surface irritated the receptors of the feet, helped to strengthen the muscles and ligaments. Modern man is forced to move shod over hard asphalt or concrete, which does not absorb. This is why flat feet have become a problem for residents of megacities.
Express test for flat feet:
Smear your feet with a fat cream. Lay a clean sheet of paper on the floor and stand on it. Straighten the trunk, connect the legs. To the gravity of the body could be distributed evenly. Now draw a line in the pencil that connects the edges of the plantar groove (the beginning and the end) of the foot notch, where there is no print, call it segment A, and compare its parameters with the size of the foot. If the segment A occupies more than half of the foot, you are all right, if half or less, that is, there is no cavity or it is small, you need to turn to the orthopedist. This test is suitable for children.