Saturday, October 4, 2008

Sandals & Existentialism

Your comments always get me thinking. A reader asked what I thought of the current trend of sandals as everyday footware on foot health.
Sandals are leisure wear, period. It drives me nuts when kids show up for rehab in them. What did they think was going to happen? I would be serving them cocktails on the veranda?
The deeper issue is the external locus of control. The healing is going to come from some pill, or some cream, or some machine, or somebody. A friend of mine used to have a poster hanging in his A.T. room that said, "if you want treatment, talk to an ATC, if you want to heal your injury, talk to God". The religious theme aside, the point is the power to heal is already inside all of us. The creator, or nature-whatever fits, designed our body in a way that requires movement to keep it healthy. The solution to healing lies in that fact.
Sandals belong on the boardwalk, pool or beach. How many of us have seen the idiots who get them stuck in escalators, or who trip over a crack in the sidewalk, or get them stuck in a revolving door etc? I'm not sure of the effect they have on the foot arch or everyday walking mechanics. However, it appears you need more of a shuffling action to walk with them. So, if you have an athlete returning from an ankle sprain, I could see it inhibiting dorsiflexion.

2 comments:

ABPrints said...

Nice post. Try working in Florida. Drives me nuts when a student athlete enters the room complaining of some sort of lower leg pain, but wearing sandals or crocs or flipflops. My next question is always 'how often do you wear those?'

Kevatc said...

"..... the point is the power to heal is already inside all of us."

I explain my treatment/rehab rationale from time to time by saying it's not what you do to the body in terms of treatment or rehab but instead, what you make the body do.