Here's why your feet hurt — and what you can do about it

Life Kit

NPR

Health & Fitness, Self-improvement, Kids & Family, Education, Business

4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you're struggling with foot pain from bunions, Achilles tendinitis or plantar fasciitis, it might be time to reevaluate your foot care routine. In this episode, foot experts share advice on picking the right running shoes, strengthening your feet muscles and more.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Whoever you are, wherever you're from, NPR is here for you.
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0:19.0	Visit donate.npr.org.
0:22.9	You're listening to LifeKit from NPR.
0:28.7	Hey everybody. It's Mariel.
0:33.6	All right, y'all. I'm starting this episode with a deep sigh because we are talking about feet.
0:39.8	And it's a deep sigh because feet elicit a lot of strong feelings.
0:44.2	Everything from the shape of someone's toes, the height of their arch, the skin of their heel, the overall look and smell can provoke insecurity, disgust, even deep fear.
0:56.1	And then there's the wiki feet side of the spectrum.
0:59.0	If you're not familiar, that is a foot fetish website where people post photos of
1:02.9	celebrities' feet and rate them.
1:05.4	A couple years ago, the Huffington Post published an article proclaiming that the unruly
1:09.4	online culture around feet has made a lot of
1:12.0	Gen Ziers want to hide their feet away almost entirely. And let me tell you, I can relate to that.
1:18.2	So yeah, we can get weird about the aesthetics of our feet. But let's take a step back, okay,
1:23.4	and think about the utility of feet. Oh my gosh, our feet are so amazing.
1:29.2	If you just think about the anatomy, we have 26 bones, we have 33 articulations,
1:34.7	the six degrees of freedom of motion.
1:37.0	And so these feet are complex, but they serve us many functions.
1:41.1	Irene Davis really knows feet.
	...

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