Why do the bottom of your feet hurt after walking on concrete all day? What is it that’s even being affected? The skin or muscle or bone or nerves or something else?
In: Biology
Depending on how long you walk/stand on a hard surface like concrete, bone, muscle and connective tissue may be affected. A hard surface does not cushion your steps, so you transmit a sharper and stronger wave of mechanical pressure all the way to your knees and pelvis. Over a day, this doesn’t do much, but over longer periods and especially for women, stress fractures may develop. These are tiny fractures in bones in the food and ankle, they’re not too bad and they can heal, but they do cause pain when using the limb. Over longer times, knees may get damaged. Their cartilage may degrade and possibly result in osteoarithritis for those susceptible. Over one day though, probably it’s a combination of tiny injuries to the connective tissue, bone and calf muscles’ tendons cause local inflammations that feel like pain. Achilles tendinitis is quite painful, in both calf and heel. Not to mention also plantar fasciitis, which is an inflammation of flat band of connective tissue connecting your heel to your toes and supporting your foot arch. Walking on concrete can put so much stress on the foot that tiny tears develop in it leading to inflammation and pain. This fasciitis only occurs over long term though and takes months to fully recover from.
A lot of this can be alleviated or prevented with proper walking gait and good shoes.
In short, yes.
The skin is abraded, the muscles work harder due to the “no-give” compared to the cushioning they’re used to, and can be bruised, and the bones are similarly not used to that type of impact and can be bruised and suffer micro-fracturing.
Edit: the nerves generally just transmit the pain signals from these other body parts, but any damage to the nerves (which wouldn’t be as likely in normal walking) would also be perceived as pain -specifically burning/tingling – or numbness.
When you walk on carpet, wood, soil or even gravel, the ground has a little bit of bounce to it. Much like when you smack your hand on to your bed.
Concrete does not have any bounce to it. So it’s like smacking your hand on the counter top.
The pain you feel in your feet is a mixture of muscle and tendon wear.
The feet hit the concrete
The shock is felt in the solid bones
Transfers it to the tendons that hold those bones and this causes them to stretch suddenly and ache.
It may also cause pain in the ankles because these bones sit on one another so it’s like smashing marbles together in a bag.
The weight of your entire body is supported on your skeleton, which is mostly rigid. Now consider that the bottoms of your feet are the cushion between your hard bones and the hard floor. Ever have a person with a bony bottom sit on your lap? That’s the pressure the soles of your feet are feeling, and it hurts. That’s why wearing soft shoes or standing on a soft mat help.
I actually stopped wearing slippers in my hardwood floors, you are so used to getting cushioned from soles, carpet that you forget to use your natural cushions in your feet!
I got into reading about training to be barefoot again it’s pretty incredible, my knee pain is gone! And I could see whole new mechanical improvement.
From as long as I can remember I wore shoes (of course to protect my feet and all) but when I started doing spots, boy did these injuries pop left and right. I went to so many Physical therapists that I started looking into just retraining my foot ligaments and tendons and whatever else is there.
I try to jump rope barefoot, and use minimal shoes and really make sure my feet maintain their shape and purpose.
I threw away my ultra arch support shoes when I realized it hindered my progress and needed to slowly decline the support to build strength.
Tldr: it’s not the floor, it’s your feet that forgot how to absorb shocks.
It’s all being affected. Your feet are meant to walk on naturally occurring surfaces, not hard concrete inside leather coffins. Just another human created problem that was meant to solve other human created problems, and thus spawning further human created problems. The majority of my work is spent addressing these things (licensed massage therapist here)
I worked in a warehouse with lots of cement floors. There were padded floors in areas where people would stand in one spot for a long time but most of the building was cement, and to be honest the padding was garbage. Yeah it had more give than the cement, but that only goes so far when you’re standing on it 9 hours a day.
I worked for almost two years, by that point I had done major damage to my heel bones just by working in that building. I couldn’t stand for more than an hour at a time without excruciating pain. It was exhausting and I only pushed through that job because I had no other choice.
I worked with a physical therapist for months, and after basically no improvement we determined I had what my physical therapist referred to as bone bruises. Basically bruises directly to my heel bones that were reinforced every time I stood on them. Really hard to get rid of and basically impossible to get rid of without staying off them for extended periods of time. I was fortunate enough to be able to move in with my parents after I left that job and have been able to stay mostly off my feet for like 6 months. I can now walk for a normal amount of time before the pain is unbearable. I think it still gets painful sooner than it does for most people, but now I can do normal activities on my feet without wanting to cry after an hour, so that’s cool.
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