Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Today I learned about human feet!

Posted by Dani

  


My apologies to those who follow, the holidays were a very busy time and it was difficult to keep up, but here I am and I come bearing foot knowledge. Sit back and kick up your feet, they deserve to have some attention! Not many people think about their feet more than what socks and shoes they will use, but the feet are very interesting.

There are 52 bones in a pair of feet, accounting for 25% of all the bones in the body. Each individual foot has 26 bones, 33 joints and over 100 muscles, tendons and ligaments. In addition to all those fun things, the feet contain 250,000 sweat glands and can produce as much as a pint of moisture each day. To fully understand the weight of that statement, picture this:


But instead of tasty ice cream, it is filled with foot juice. Delicious, isn't it? 

The soles of the feet have more nerve endings and sweat glands in one place than any other place in the body, which is why so many people have ticklish feet. When it comes to footwear, it is best to shop in the afternoon. The reason being that our feet swell slightly throughout the day and it's important to get shoes that fit during that time. The average shoe sizes in the US are 10.5 for men and 8.5 for women, which makes me feel better about my size 9s. 


Walking is the best exercise to give your feet. It helps with weight control, improves circulation and makes a person healthier overall. The average person takes 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day, adding up to 115,000 times a lifetime, which is longer than walking the circumference of the globe four times over! That's some serious footwork! On top of that, adding up the total amount of weight put on your feet by a day's worth of walking is equal to hundreds of tons, something like the weight of a fully loaded cement truck. Standing in one place for an extended period of time, as many who work know, is more tiring than walking because it is making demands of the same muscles for a long time. 



Now that you've learned a bit about your feet, let's kick things up a notch (pun intended) and look at some famous feet. One very interesting and inspiring person is known not even for two foot, but one. Christy Brown, an Irish writer and painter was born with cerebral palsy and was unable to move anything but his left foot. He learned to create using all that he had and became an amazing writer and painter. The above image is a picture of his work Killarney.



Another amazing example of perseverance and fancy footwork is the lovely Miss Jessica Cox of Tuscon, AZ. Miss Cox was born without any arms due to a birth defect, but she has not let it slow her down by any means! Jessica is able to drive without any car modifications, type on a keyboard at a rate of 25 words per minute, pump her own gas and even put in remove her contact lenses. What's more impressive than that? Well, she alsoset records for being the first armless black-belt in the American Taekwondo Association. If you still aren't impressed, try this: Jessica Cox is the first armless person to be licensed to fly. That's right, she flies a plane with her feet and she does it well. 

So there are some interesting foot facts for your day! I hope everyone enjoyed today's learning!

1 comments:

Unknown said...

Just to let you know that the above painting of Killarney is by me, Liam Daly (AKA eolai) and not Christy Brown. You can see the painting on several of my websites e.g. liamdaly.com, irishkc.com and bicyclistic.com where there are many other paintings in a similar style. Christy's own fine work is quite different and I'm only letting you know not to complain but rather to do justice to Christy's work so you could perhaps put up a painting of his as you intended.

Post a Comment