How to Have Pain Free Toes and Feet.

Or how to Walk like an Egyptian!

If I'm ever in a big city, I love finding museums and galleries.

And given time it's always the statues and artwork I end up standing gazing at. It's the bodies! they're just so interesting! Seeing how we've changed over thousands of years.

Sometimes it's the posture, bones or muscles that grab me.

But recently in the Lisbon Gulbenkian Museum it was Flora's feet!

Look at them, poor Flora

She was probably young (the model I guess) and look what's already happening to her toes! can you see?

She's got a little bunion starting on her big toe. All four of her other toes are starting to club and the little toe is already being pushed underneath its neighbour.

And the unhappy state of Flora's feet in this statue from the 1800s was made particularly clear by being placed two rooms down from Bet, an ancient Egyptian with perfect, healthy feet and toes; all long and spread and beautiful; 4000 years before Flora and Winkle-pickers were even thought of.

The cause of the damage to Flora's feet was almost certainly wearing shoes that were too small. Both too short, so compressing her soft, malleable toes, and with two narrow a toebox, which squeezed her toes together.

Wearing shoes that are too small contributes to so many problems from plantar fasciitis to foot pain, ankle pain, knee and hip problems poor balance and peripheral neuropathy. Poor future Flora!

So right now let your toes wiggle free and have a look at them. Do they look like Flora's? If they do, then your feet will love you if you buy some new shoes almost certainly at least a shoe size bigger than you usually wear, and with a wide toebox. (A wide toebox isn't just a wide shoe fitting, it means the shoe is designed to allow your toes to lie straight and to spread in length a little as you walk).

Birkenstock are a great company and sell shoes and boots as well as sandals. I know they're expensive but Vinted is a great secondhand site if money is tight. I also love and wear boots and shoes from Freet and Vivo Barefoot. And my running shoes these days are always Altra.

Amazingly even our socks compress our toes too! Look at their shape and how they - oh so innocently - come to a point. So I only use toe socks these days, which hold each toe in its own little woolly compartment. Injinji and my favourites. Go for a size bigger than you normally buy - so medium if you're usually a small - so that the socks last a bit longer.

I'll pop some exercises on my next post to help you strengthen and straighten your feet and toes. Then you're started on the road to having feet like an ancient Egyptian! It's up to you to master the dance though ;)