Bare Feet & Slippers

Have you found yourself spending all your time in your slippers or in bare feet?

During this period of ‘lock down’ when many of us have been prevented from carrying out our usual daily activities e.g. going to work.  This means that a lot of us have been, largely confined to home, more especially those people in self isolation.

This has inevitably led to various changes which can be beneficial but may also cause problems. For example, some have used this time to do more ‘keep fit’ or gardening. If these activities are started too rapidly and your body is not used to the new loads and movements, it can cause injury. We would therefore suggest that you gradually build into these activities allowing your body to adjust.

Similarly, the type of footwear that you would normally be wearing may be altered during this unusual period. Supportive work footwear, for example, may have been replaced by unsupportive sandals or slippers or no footwear at all. This means that the help that supportive footwear offers to the feet and lower leg may not be provided when wearing non supportive footwear.

As a result, problems such as Heel Pain (Plantar Fasciitis) and Achilles tendonitis are more likely. If you are experiencing the start of any of these type of problems, we suggest that you consider the possibility that it may be due to the changes in your activities or the changes in your footwear.

If you think that this may be the case it would be useful to either ease off from the new activities and then gradually reintroduce them , or, if you think that your problem may be due to a change in footwear, reintroduce supportive footwear such as trainers when you are being most active.

If you are have any specific problems you would like to discuss with our podiatry team – contact us we are happy to offer advice and hopefully we will be able to offer appointments very soon.