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Simple Steps to Foot Pain Relief: The New Science of Healthy Feet.  Katy Bowman.  BenBella Books.  Dallas, Texas. 2016.

Soft Cover.  Glued.  173 p.  Appendix.  Exercises.  References/Additional Reading.  Index.  0.6 lbs. 

Referred by a physician, found in the Eureka Springs Carnegie Library, purchased at Alabris.com

After all that heady quantum mechanics stuff, let’s bring things back down to earth … specifically, to our feet.

I’m almost embarrassed to be writing a review of this genre—self-help—for this website.  I wish Stuart Ritchie were reading along so he could counsel me on how scientifically valid the book truly is.

But some marks in Bowman’s favor: she does not promote any of her services or products in the body of the book and there are only veiled references to such in the appendix; she counsels going slow in making changes to our habits; and her appendix on exercises really does offer up practical and easy-to-understand instructions.

In other words, not a typical self-help book designed to hook you into buying more of her products; instead, this book really is about how you and I can help our feet and legs feel better.

I’m a working-class man and on my feet all day, on concrete; my feet, calves, and knees hurt.  Or, at least, they used to … until reading this book, following some of its suggestions, and practicing its exercises.

I was intrigued from the get-go by the fact that she talks about the body in terms of mechanical physics and geometry along with physiology and anatomy.  Biomechanics.  Well, that’s science, and I was in pain, so let’s dive in and see what she has to say.

Feet are complicated: ¼ of all a human’s bones reside in the feet; ¼ of all muscles and ¼ of all motor nerves are also in the feet.  There are an astonishing twenty-six bones in each foot.  Feet can be—are in fact designed to be—as dexterous as our hands. 

Which means our toes can—potentially—move independently of each other; the front and back halves of the feet can move independently of each other; the foot’s arch is formed by bones and muscles, not by arch support inserts.  Like all muscles in any other part of the body, foot muscles need to be both flexible and strong.

So how are you exercising all those muscles and nerves in such tiny dimensions as your feet?  And how are you helping or hindering those muscles to exercise and stretch?  Per Bowman, certainly not by wearing tight fitting, toe-squeezing, hard-soled, rigid shoes.

I love her analogy: put on a pair of mittens with hard palms and made of stiff leather that fit tightly and squeeze your fingers together.  Now go out and live your life!  How long before your hands are deformed, hurting, and shooting pain up your arms?

Or here’s another way of looking at our shoes: imagine a body fine-tuned to stand a certain way; all the joints, tendons, and ligaments are aligned in synchrony with each other.  Now, shift that body by inserting a wedge under its ground support: the shoe’s heel. 

When you consider mechanical physics and geometry, you can make a testable hypothesis on how that body will act and evolve henceforth: unstably, out-of-whack, and no longer finely tuned but instead making adjustments at every joint to compensate for this awkward tilt.  Especially if this heel is worn for hours at a time, for days, weeks, and years at a time.

And this is why Bowman counsels going slow with making adjustments to your footwear, your exercises, and your activities.  Your body has indeed adjusted to the heel, as best it can anyway.  And with all that pain for wearing a heel, the body has nevertheless compensated the muscles by making some shorter and tighter while making others longer and looser. 

But the aim is to make all those muscles in the feet both flexible and strong, and that takes time.  So she counsels going slow: don’t just start today with wearing flat shoes and going barefoot all the time.  Don’t start trying to paint pictures with your feet right away.  Don’t expect miracles overnight.

For however many years you’ve been wearing heeled shoes with constricted toes, it will take a long time to help the body readjust, one day at a time, one stretch at a time, one exercise at a time.

I stand, move, and work on cement 40 hours a week so for the past two to three years I’ve been wearing work boots I bought from a local shoe shop that caters to people working in factories, construction, and other physically active jobs.  They assured me that many people wear those boots in their jobs.

Those poor pained people!

Over the course of these two to three years, my feet, my shins, my hamstrings, and my knees became more and more painfully tight.  I began a vigorous leg exercise program that emphasized stretching and strengthening routines.  But still, every night as I tried to fall asleep, my legs would twitch, with muscle spasms in my hamstrings and calves keeping me from being able to drift off into slumber.

Only after I reverted to wearing flat-heeled sneakers did my hamstrings begin to loosen up during the day, not just when I did my stretches.  I began to adjust my stance as she suggests, and my hips began hurting less.  

I have since discovered that a couple of my co-workers have been wearing flat-heeled shoes and swear by them: they will not wear heeled shoes again.

Despite the self-help style I complained about earlier, there is a lot in this book.  I returned it to the library after I finished reading it, but found myself thinking about it often, and trying to remember the exercises, which she suggests should be done in slow increments over time.  I finally gave up and bought the book so I can continue practicing the exercises regularly, over time.  And I’m buying only flat-heeled, wide-toed shoes from now on.

I had just finished reading three books on quantum physics when I picked up this book.  When I read Bowman’s comment in the Introduction, “Biomechanics is the study of Newtonian physics (things like gravity, pressure, and friction) applied to living tissues,” I was certainly intrigued.  My curiosity to finish the book has paid off with less pain.

Other posts that mention this review: An Immense World