Are Your Children's School Shoes Too Tight?
Why you should make sure your child’s footwear fits properly:
If your child’s shoes are too short and tight their toes become distorted. This can lead to
painful joints and change the toe joints into Hallux Valgus, bunions and hammer toes.
Change in the natural direction of the muscle fibres, which can cause muscle and tendon pain along with inflammation dystrophy or shortening of the foot muscles.
poor blood circulation causing feelings of coldness and numbness of the feet and vein problems such as varicose veins.
Formation of corns, callouses, ingrown toenails.
Peripheral neuropathy conditions which influence the message relay between the brain and muscles.
Plantar fasciitis, the inflammation of your tendon at the bottom of your foot. This can occur if your shoe does not have the correct support.
The feet are the foundation of your body. If you are not comfortable in your shoes you may alter your posture to make the shoes comfortable. Poor posture can lead to injuries resulting in the knee, hip and back.
Hallux Valgus and bunion
Corns and Callouses.
Can Massage Relieve These Symptoms?
Reflexology can assist in bringing relief to your painful feet. By working around the big toe relief maybe found in the bunion pain. Bunions are structural issues and cannot be healed through reflexology. Callouses come about due to ill-fitting shoes but can also be indicative of a weak organ in the body. Stimulation of these reflexes can lead to an improvement in the appearance of callouses. Corns come about from crooked toes, where the lower joint of the smaller toes becomes weak. Toe rotations and the thumb walking used in reflexology can help stretch and relax the muscles of the toes. Through the reflexology treatment the areas that cause the plantar Fasciitis system get stretched out which relieves the symptoms of plantar fasciitis. Reflexology seeks to bring the body back into balance, to a homeostatic system. By stimulating the nerve endings in the feet the muscles are also stimulated and therefore can assist in foot pain relief.
Reflexology massages over the areas associated with plantar fasciitis symptoms.
How do you know your shoe size is correct?
Particularly school shoes one should check shoe size every 8 weeks. This can be done by using your thumb width.
Make sure your child is wearing the usual socks with their shoe.
Make sure that their heel is against the wall of the shoe and tie the laces up.
Ask your child to stand straight.
Feel for the position of your child’s longest toe, it could be the big toe or second toe.
If it is a new shoe the shoe should be your thumb width, (approximately 12-14 mm) away from the longest toe.
If it is less than this the shoes should be replaced.
This can also be done by taking the in-sole out of the shoe and asking your child to place their foot on it. And then you can see if the longest toe is a thumb width from the toe for the shoe.
The longest toe should be a thumb width away.
The longest toe should be approximately 12-14 mm away from the shoe.