• In the UK, 14 million people seek medical advice about their feet every year.
• Four out of five adults in the UK have some kind of foot problem.
• Women have approximately four times as many foot problems as men.
• As a person’s income increases the prevalence of foot problems decreases.
• Leonardo da Vinci referred to the foot as “the greatest engineering device in the world”.
• Each foot has 26 bones, 37 joints, 38 muscles and tendons, 107 ligaments and miles of blood vessel and nerves.
• Feet live in shoes for 16 hours per day which is two-thirds of an entire lifetime.
• There are more sweat glands per inch of our foot than anywhere else in the body – 250,000 in total.
• An average pair of feet give off about half a pint of perspiration a day, or more on warm/humid days or when exercising.
• About 55% of foot perspiration is evaporated through the top rim of the shoe, the other 45% remains inside the shoe against the foot.
• During the first year of a baby’s life, the foot reaches almost half its adult size.
• When our feet are in good condition they work in harmony with out body, carrying us without pain. But when neglected, various problems can result.
• The average person takes about 18,000 steps per day.
• We walk an average 70,000 miles in a lifetime almost four times around the globe.
• With every mile we walk, we shift approximately one hundred tonnes, (the weight of a blue whale), just to move our own body weight forward.
• The foot is made up of 26 bones and 23 muscles. This complicated structure is designed to take the pressure of 3 times the body weight with every step.
• 70% of foot problems are caused by poorly made and ill-fitting shoes.
• Taking good care of your feet is a life time investment.