Keep on Truckin’

Today’s post is a picture I like to call Just Another Reason it’s Important to Take Care of Your Feet:

I live in a retirement community. Not in a complex or anything like that, but the entire town. Is a retirement community. Which has its benefits. Some of those benefits are:

1. Garage sales every day of the week.

2. My free lectures are always booked to the hilt.

3. The library is well-funded, well-stocked, and well-managed.

4. You can pick up a slightly used car for a good price.

5. Seeing fully-employed people over 60. No, really. If you drive through Starbucks here, your frappe-whatever will be served to you by someone who has grandchildren. That goes for the samplers at Costco too.

6. You can dress your baby entirely in hand-knitted garb, acquired at local craft and church bazaars. You could probably dress yourself as well, if you tried hard enough.

Then, there are the non-benefits:

1. Nothing is open after 7PM.

2. Ordering a sandwich and drink at the local kids' carnival (where there are only 150 attending) will take you 27 minutes, despite the fact that there are two money takers, two ticket takers, five people putting the sandwiches on plates, and three people delivering said plates to the table. P.S. This includes the times when there is only one person ahead of you.

3. The sound of riding lawn mowers is constant between the hours of 10 and 4.

4. Lots of free advice, like, You Should Be Wearing Better Shoes, or, Your Kid Should Have His Shoes On.

5. No one gets my Top Gun or Big Lebowski jokes. Or most of my jokes, for that matter.

6. You can be killed while sitting in the window seat of your favorite restaurant. Or using the ATM at the bank. Or standing in line at the post office.

We’ve only lived here for 8 months, but in that time, there have been 5 incidents of this:

Now you’ve got two types of nerves in your feet. Sensory nerves are the nerves that your feet “feel” with, sending that information to your brain. Motor nerves control your ability to move your foot based on info your brain gets from the sensory nerves.

Lots of good decisions are made by your brain, regarding information coming in via these nerves. Decisions like, press harder on the brake pedal or, that’s not the brake pedal, that’s the accelerator --MOVE YOUR FOOT TO THE LEFT!

Years of ill fitting shoes, tight muscles in the feet and calves, and poor whole-body habits like wearing your hips and pelvis out in front of you (right over your toes) lead to muscular atrophy in the foot and foot-nerve damage. This damage can lead to foot pain, sure, but it can also play a factor in bigger accidents with more serious outcome.

If you have a foot issue now, fix it now. In studies of those with peripheral neuropathy (nerve damage in the feet) muscle weakness was detected BEFORE the neuropathy was. What should you do? You need to Strengthen. Your. Feet.

How?

Read. This. Book.

And then give it to every person you know. Especially those who want to keep on driving safely! With a little diligence, anyone can significantly improve the health of their feet and improve their self-efficacy in later years.

Ciao. I’m going out to breakfast. Table in the middle of the dining room, please.