Best foot forward

After years of wearing her shoes to a nub in no time flat, reporter Jen Gerson heads to the foot clinic to get help

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[align=center]Jen Gerson with flat feet and wrecked shoes[/align]

Some people wear down their brake pads. I kill shoes.

From childhood, shoe shopping has been a protracted affair. A penchant for climbing trees and kicking gravel at my male cohorts led to quick deaths for my mother's early attempts at black patent buckled mary janes and pink lace socks. Behavioural patterns and genetics continued to work against me into my late childhood and teens: the feet grew long and narrow and I developed a protruding second ankle bone that limited me to the most comfortable running shoes.

Attempts to follow my girlfriends into the world of mini pumps would lead, inevitably, to stifled crying fits in suburban mall bathrooms.

My shoe situation would affect my adolescent sartorial choices.

Needless to say, little time was spent crying over boys.

Don't cry for me, however. I overcame these handicaps with the help of pretty ballerina flats, pointed pastel numbers with a little lift, loafers, embroidered moccasins from Little India and, eventually, black leather open-toe summer shoes with a one-inch heel. (It took practice. Cock the hip. Heel, toe, heel toe, click clack, click clack.)

Yet I found no peace in shoe-ville. Looking at my friends' shoe racks, I marvelled at how they managed to keep their collection of platforms and loafers in good condition for years, while a month or two on my size 9 foot would wear a sturdy heel to the nub. Some said I was a decisive walker.

I suspected another cause.

So it was off to the Complete Foot Health Clinic, where all aspects of foot health care can be analyzed and treated; from ingrown toenails, plantar warts, corns, calluses, pain, gait analysis, bowleggedness, custom footwear, and lack of circulation caused by diabetes.

The Foot Clinic near Yonge and Eglinton looks like a shoe store in a gated retirement community in Florida. It is painted a calm shade of blue, sells special purpose Crocs and rows of respectable black footwear with excellent arch support.

"Why are orthopedic shoes so ugly?" I asked chiropodist Salman Alam.

"Being orthopedic and being fashionable is just hard because the shoe has to cover as much of the foot as possible," he said. Also, manufacturers are only just starting to realize the demand for pretty, supportive shoes.

From a plastic shopping bag, I pulled out the latest casualties of my way of walking: a pair of cream-coloured flats and black heels, repaired thrice in two months, then abandoned.

Alam examined the damage.

"A lot of times, it can be due to the way you're walking. A lot of people do wear on the outside of the shoe the way you do. It can do with the way you're walking and the way your foot's positioned, whether you're a pronator, your arch is collapsing, or a supinator, you have a high arch. It can also be dependent on whether you have tight calves or if your legs are externally rotated," he said.

Inside the examining room, I sat on a blue chair, removed my socks and pointed out the quirks of my lower extremities. Alam tested my foot by moving it in a circle.

"You do have pretty tight calves," he said. Tight calves limit how far the ankle can move. He explained that those who can't bend their feet far enough forward tend to splay their feet to the side when walking, which can skew posture.

His examination continued to the second anklebone that had, since childhood, stuck out from the inner sides of my feet, to the horror of many a sleepover guest.

"This is actually your navicular bone," he said, pointing to the working parts of a 26-bone replica of a working foot, threaded together with ligaments made with white, stretchy string.

"This is your ankle bone here and this is actually your tibia bone here," he pointed. "You're actually a moderate pronator, so your arches are collapsing. It's very typical for pronators for this bone to be sticking out."

"Arches collapsing. What does that mean?"

"Basically that your foot is very flexible," Alam said.

"Oh. That's good," I said.

"Uh. Not really."

There's another word for this, he said: I have a mild case of flatfoot.

Again, he pulled out the skeletal model foot to explain.

A foot first hits the ground on the heel, then the arch collapses, or pronates, he said, pushing the fake foot into the palm of his hands.

This absorbs shock. Normally, a foot should then become rigid, or supinate. The arches become firm and the foot rolls into the next step.

"Think of it as pushing off of a lever. If your foot is too flexible, you're not going to get any leverage from the foot," he said.

The tight calves and flat feet are the probable cause of the premature deaths of my shoes. Aside from a frequent purchaser's plan at Payless, little can be done.

Orthopedics rarely help for cases like mine. Calf stretches may help with the range of motion in my ankle. Flatfooted women should wear a heel of about an inch and a half to help correct the arches, he said.

From the plastic bag, I pulled out the pair of copper stilettos I bought in Chinatown for $17.99.

"So, not like these?"

His eyes bulged. "No. Those will offer you no support at all," he said.

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