Symptoms update - uneven legs, and feet

A bit of a symptoms update, mostly around foot care.

I had noticed some time ago that I was 'gathering' dead skin on my feet. I had been avoiding scrubbing the bottoms of my feet in the shower because it was difficult to do that, and I had more important things to get to (like a coffee!)

I decided recently that this situation had to change, and I shouldn't leave the dead skin on my feet, so I started two things - a foot care routine, and adding stretches in to my routine to make it less difficult to clean the bottom of my feet in the shower.

So, on the foot care front, I found an old foot bath in the garage which I resurrected and soak my feet for half an hour every now and again. I also bought a range of tools for dealing with my feet, the most vicious of which looks like a rasp, and there are a few files and a pumice stone. I've been scraping the dead skin off every now and again, and applying moisturiser most days. Readers should note that foot care is not my speciality, this approach just felt right for me after a quick bit of Googling! Its an ongoing project, but there is definitely less dead skin on my feet now!

On the stretch front I have added the simple stretch of sitting on the floor with my legs crossed. I cannot do this without leaning back on something, so I sit with my back against some furniture and then get my legs as far crossed as they will go. I focus on trying to get my knees to go down, hold for about 30 seconds and then swap my legs over (so the other foot is closer to my body) and repeat.

The stretches are working because it is becoming easier to be able to get to the bottom of my feet in the shower, so that is good (and hopefully the footcare means I will get less dead skin building up).

The interesting thing to note is that my gait is most affected on my left leg - that is the shoe which get the wear/damage quicker. For foot cleaning it is more difficult for me to lift my right foot. This tells me that I am getting degradation in both legs, but that degradation seems to be affecting different muscles in each leg - and why this post has "uneven legs" in the title!

The great unknown is why I was collecting the dead skin there in the first place. I suspect that a big part of this is lack of regular scrubbing of my feet. But, I also think that part of it will be due to my insoles causing my foot to be at a different angle in my shoe which will re-distribute my weight to different parts of the foot.

I think that the message I would like people to take away is that stretches can help get movement back. It is a question of working out which muscles are tight, and then finding a way of regularly stretching those muscles so that they become longer and are used more regularly. You should notice a change with a new stretch (the change may be small and it may take a few days/weeks to be noticeable)