Fascinating Foot Facts
A few interesting facts which help us understand how hard our feet work and how important it is to keep them happy.
- The average adult takes in excess of 18,000 steps a day and it's even more for children.
- Most feet walk about 70,000 miles in a lifetime - that's four times around the earth.
- Leonardo da Vinci called the foot a masterpiece of engineering. Each foot has 26 bones, 19 muscles, over 100 ligaments and thousands of nerve endings.
- Every time your foot hits the floor when walking it's the equivalent of twice your body weight. Running increases this to up to three times your body weight.
- The foot has 250,000 sweat glands releasing about a quarter pint of perspiration every day.
- Around 70% of foot problems come from wearing the wrong footwear or ill-fitting shoes. The majority of these are caused by ill-fitting footwear worn as a child.
- Over £30 million is spent annually on chiropody services for the over 60s and most of these foot problems can be attributed to badly fitting shoes or unsuitable footwear in childhood.