Real Foot Facts

• The foot contains 26 bones, 33 joints, 107 ligaments and 19 muscles.
• 25% of all the bones in the human body is in your feet. When these bones are out of alignment, so is the rest of the body.
• There are 250,000 sweat glands in a pair of feet. Sweat glands in the feet excrete as much as a half-pint of moisture a day.
• The average person takes approximately 8-10,000 steps/day and will walk almost 115,000 miles in his/her lifetime. This is the equivalent to about 41/2 times around the earth.
• Foot problems are the most common cause of admission to hospital for people with Diabetes.
• 60-70% of people with Diabetes will develop some form of nerve and/or circulation-related foot problems within their life time.
• Women suffer from four times as many problems than men. This is believed to be a result of their choice of footwear, which usually consists of shoes with narrow toes and high heels.
• Cigarette smoking is the biggest cause of Peripheral Vascular Disease (disease of the arteries and blood vessels of the feet and legs) which often leads to pain on walking (intermittant claudication), ulceration and in the most severe cases - gangrene and possible amputation.
• It's rare that two feet are exactly the same; one of them is often larger than the other so when buying shoes be sure the fitting is for the larger foot. Shopping for shoes is best done in the afternoon, when your feet have swollen a little.
• The Achilles tendon located in the heel of the foot was named after one of the most famous mythical characters from Homer's 'Iliad'. In an attempt to immortalize her son, Thetis (Achilles' Mother) dipped Achilles into the River Styx, holding him by his ankle. Therefore his ankle became the only part of his body capable of sustaining a mortal wound. This is why the strongest tendon in the foot acquired the name of Achilles tendon.