August 31st, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in Health Tips
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Have you ever had a strange cramp in your foot (between your big toe and the next one or in the ball of your foot) after wearing flip flops all day? Do you get sore calves or pain in the bottom of your feet?
Flip flops seem comfortable and easy to wear (I like them because they don’t pinch wide feet) but they actually create more work for your foot and leg muscles than regular shoes. You may not realize it, but when you wear flip flops your toes must grip them extra firmly to keep them from sliding off or sideways. So you actually contract many extra toe muscles (like the adductor hallucis and the flexor hallucis brevis) with each step you take. Wearing flip flops for long hours can give you actual cramps in these muscles and others.
In addition to muscle cramps, flip flops have no arch support so your calf muscles and Achilles tendon have to work extra hard and can become sore. And finally, the lack of support can strain your plantar fascia (a thin rubbery band on the bottom of your foot), causing pain at its point of origin on the heel bone.
So if you’re having foot pain or muscle cramps – it may be caused by too much flip flopping. Of course, the cure is simple: wear comfortable shoes with good arch support and sturdy straps. Luckily for you, summer is almost over and your feet may recover naturally as you pack up the flip flops and pull out the work shoes.This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
August 5th, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in News
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Russia has been promoting a new sport: the stiletto heels sprint. Although I’d heard of this a couple of months ago, I just noticed some video footage on Yahoo! In this particular race, over 200 women turned out to run 1 kilometer (about 2/3 of a mile) in heels that are at least 3.5 inches high.
It is well known that regularly wearing high heels can result in foot deformities such as bunions and corns. And yet women continue to wear them as they never seem to go out of fashion. If you’re unwilling to give up those heels, but would like to avoid having feet that look like this, here are some tips for you:
1. Minimize the distance you walk in heels. Carry your shoes to work with you and wear flats or sneakers during most of your walking.
2. Wear shoes that are wide in the toe box and do not squeeze your toes together.
3. Put metatarsal pads in your high heeled shoes, to keep your foot from sliding forward (especially if they are closed-toe).
4. Don’t wait too long to see a rehabilitation medicine specialist or podiatrist if you think you’re developing a bunion. Corrective action should be taken as early as possible.
5. If you’re working at your desk, remember to slip off your shoes to reduce the pressure on your toes. Every lit bit helps when it comes to reducing toe joint stress. If your relatives have bunions, you may be at higher risk for developing them too.
As for those Russian women who race in their stilettos, all I can say is that they’ll be keeping the rehab docs, orthopedists and podiatrists in business!This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
May 19th, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in Health Tips
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It was a beautiful day for a run today, 72 degrees, light
wind, clear blue sky and lush foliage… the trail was busier than usual, with
bikers passing me every few minutes. But
otherwise, it couldn’t have been a better day.
My running partner recently left DC to spend a couple of months working
in Morocco,
and I swore to myself that I wouldn’t completely go to pot while she was
gone. So I forced myself to get into my
gear and go for a solo run. Being alone
gave me the chance to reflect on 5 running lessons…
Don’t compare
yourself to others – there will always be someone better, faster, fitter,
stronger, smarter… It’s important to be
content with who you are, and do the best with what you’ve got. At least, this is what I told myself as I was
passed by the majority of joggers on the trail, dragging myself along to mile
4.
Appreciate the beauty
of nature – it’s so easy to take nature for granted. I ran by a patch of mushrooms, and one had
been broken off its stalk and flipped over so I could see its little
vents. How can a fungus know how to grow
into such a well organized structure?
How can the cells know to line up into soft, brown vents? I don’t know… it seems pretty amazing to me
that one little organism can be so delicate, complex, and completely
independent. It never asked anyone for
permission to be itself. Meditating on
the whimsy and creativity that is abundant in the life around us can put things
into perspective.
Take responsibility
– no one’s going to help you get in shape.
It’s up to you to take care of your body. I’m really bad at this – I don’t like to exercise
alone, and I sometimes put off getting in shape unless I have a partner for
accountability. It’s as if I prefer to
delegate responsibility about my health to others. I know that this is a common tendency in
medicine – where folks rely on their doctors, without taking responsibility for
applying their advice (for diet/exercise/medications) on a daily basis.
Exercise is a
life-long discipline – as I thought about how hard it was to run, and how
heavy my legs felt, and how much easier all of this was just a couple of years
ago… I realized that exercise is not something you do every other weekend. It really is best applied on a daily basis. And being in shape is the result of
consistent hard work – so we have to focus our minds on making exercise a part
of our regimen, just as we make time to eat each day!
Don’t psych yourself
out – part of your success or failure in exercising has to do with whether
or not you believe you can do it. When
you’re running, you have to believe that you can make it the whole way… or that
you can run farther than you did last time.
The temptation is to quit when you start feeling a little tired, but you
have to keep going – encouraging yourself along the way with a positive
attitude. Of course, if you really are
unable to make it (your heart rate is at its limit and you are breathing so
hard you can’t speak) then slow down.
But a lot of the time you’ll find that running an extra mile is a matter
of mindset, not physical capability.
Do you have running lessons to share?
This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
April 22nd, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in Announcements
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Alright so now you know I love cookies. But this is just a small part of my culinary
weakness – I actually like all food, and the less healthy it is, the better it
tastes (in my opinion). Of course I try
to eat lots of green leafy veggies, lean meats, and citrus fruits… but how can
one resist hazelnut gelato or Camembert cheese?
Or who would turn up his nose at Kobe
beef with truffle oil-drizzled mashed potatoes and butter? Or what about hot scones and clotted cream
with strawberry jam?
Sigh. I must admit
that my extreme enjoyment of all things gastronomical has landed me in quite a
position on the exercise side of the calorie balance equation. I’ve never been a natural athlete though I do
like getting out into nature.
In fact, I’ve been jogging (one could not describe my
efforts as running) since I was a pre-teen.
I like the minimal hand-eye coordination required for the sport, the
virtual inability to let teammates down (running by yourself has a low risk of
disappointing others), and the freedom of being able to go wherever you like –
breathing in the fresh air, taking in the landscape, and letting the mind
wander.
And so I’ve been trying to get back into jogging as this
winter has been the most sedentary of my life.
I am now experiencing what my profession calls “deconditioning” and have
been in near awe at my body’s ability to lose its capacity to perform something
it’s been doing for decades – all within the span of <6 months.
I was recently amazed by how difficult jogging had
become. My legs felt heavy, my heart was
pounding, everyone was passing me on the trail… I was becoming quite
discouraged, when I suddenly happened upon a brilliant idea: rope someone else
into my suffering!
I approached an unsuspecting friend of mine with a proposal:
“would you like to jog with me 3 times a week in the early mornings?” I tried to make that sound as appealing as
possible, putting on my best hopeful grin while sizing her up and wondering if
she could tolerate my slow pace. Much to
my surprise, she responded with an enthusiastic “yes!” She said that she was “not any good at
running” but was trying to get back in shape and would welcome some
accountability.
And so the two of us have been trundling along a running
trail each Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning for the past month. We’ve had a lot of fun catching up on each
other’s lives, and somehow the exercise has become less arduous and more
enjoyable.
So what’s the moral of this rambling post? Exercise is hard – it’s not always fun, and
if you haven’t done it in a while, you’re guaranteed to feel fairly embarrassed
by your inabilities at first. But don’t
give up! Find a nice exercise buddy and make
time to do it regularly. That way you’ll
be healthier, happier, and able to eat occasional rich food with less guilt! Anyone out there been struggling to get more active?
This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
April 4th, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in True Stories
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My parents are strong believers in the idea of purposeful exercise. They couldn’t imagine working out in a gym, laboring on a treadmill with nothing accomplished at the end beyond sweating. No, for them, activity is critical – but it has to result in a tangible, quantifiable product.
And so it may come as no surprise that they left Manhattan in the early 70’s to raise their kids on a farm in Canada, where we were kept very busy herding cows, lifting milk crates, feeding pigs, fishing on the nearby ocean, and weeding our very large organic garden.
But as Manhattanites, my parents made sure that I read the New Yorker (we grew up with Calvin Trillin’s children), attended summer school in Paris and ski camp in Switzerland. We took a family vacation each winter to some tropical island, where I played with vacationing city kids.
But this strange combination of “country mouse, town mouse” occasionally produced some rather bizarre traditions – my favorite of which is the annual, December “Easter egg hunt.”
My parents would take us to a rather exclusive golf course on one of our vacation islands, sign up for a round in the late afternoon when most golfers were finishing up, then find us an empty bucket for golf balls. Then we’d walk off in the direction of the 9th hole, and my mom would tell us that there were golf ball “Easter eggs” hidden in the rough patches around the golf course, and that it was our job to fill up the bucket with as many balls as we could find. For young kids, I can tell you, such a challenging and large Easter egg hunt was really exciting.
So I searched fairly systematically through all the patches of rough, proudly announcing each new egg that I had uncovered: “Mom, I found one!” I’d beam, “and this one is bright orange!”
My younger sister wasn’t as successful at locating golf ball eggs. She tended to try to pick them off the fairway, where they were sitting targets. Of course my parents would have to reel her back in, explaining that the Easter eggs were only hidden in the deeper grass.
And we would spend hours and hours on our Easter egg hunts, until the sun set and the crickets drowned out the sound of the ocean waves. We often found an annoyed golf course crew waiting for us to return so they could close their pro-shop. My sister would hand them a bucket brimming with golf balls, saying “we found all these Easter eggs!” And the cuteness of her innocent glee would melt their annoyance as they put the bucket behind the counter, eyeing my parents suspiciously.
But those were good times – where exercise was effortless and fun. Where a common goal drove an entire family to activity, and kids maintained interest in something beyond the TV set.
Now as the real Easter approaches, I imagine what it would be like to return to my childhood activities at a local golf course. I suspect that my physician colleagues would frown upon me collecting stray golf balls at their respective courses. But to tell you the truth, I think that would be more fun than actually playing a round, don’t you?
This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
