This article is a transcribed edited summary of a video Bob and Brad recorded in December of 2021. For the original video go to https://youtu.be/aEuAjvBobjA .
Bob: So, my nephew’s wife started a new job. She really likes it. She’s on her feet all day long, 9- 10 hours on her feet.
Brad: Concrete floor, hard floor of some sort?
Bob: I don’t know what it is, but I know that her legs and her feet get very sore. Dogs are barking by the end of the day.
Brad: We’re not talking about Fido.
Bob: Yeah. She asked me for some suggestions, and I gave her some that she could do at work. But I also gave her one that she could do at home that’s been verified by research. So, let’s get into that. Let’s talk about first what you can do at work. She can’t even sit down most of the time.
Brad: She’s not in one place, she’s on her feet but she’s walking.
Bob: Right. What you can do is some ankle pumps. Do one at a time.
Brad: Just get the ankles and the feet moving.
Bob: Also, do a circle with your foot. It’s going to make a big difference. Then, when you get a chance, you can grab onto a countertop or something like that and stretch the calf. I’m bending the knee to give a little more stretch. You can do it straight too.
Brad: Yeah, get two different muscle groups.
Bob: All right, on breaks, when you do get a break, finally, you want to take a ball and throw it down on the floor. You’re going to roll the bottom of your foot with it.
Brad: Yeah, this spike ball is my favorite. I picked it up for a dollar, right at the checkout of a store. It’s soft, but it has these little prickles on there. You can take your shoe off and just roll it on the bottom of your foot. It’s amazing how good it feels. It feels good on the bottom of your feet. It kind of wakes you up that way a little bit. It’s good for the same reason these balls are.
Bob: You’re really stretching out the fascia, stretching out the muscle. It’s good for the bottom of your foot. All right, now we’ll go to what is it that you can do at home. The study was called, and this is what supports this idea, is “Intermittent Pneumatic Compression for Prolonged Standing Workers with Leg Edema and Pain.”
Brad: Wow.
Bob: Yeah. In other words, if you stand all day and you’re getting leg pain, this is for you because what they found is that people had significant leg pain and discomfort and swelling improved after using intermittent pneumatic compression.
Brad: So, we’re talking about someone that has been working all day?
Bob: Right.
Brad: But not an athlete that has sore muscles.
Bob: We’ll talk about that too.
Brad: Okay, good.
Bob: This is from iReliev and it’s called the leg and foot air compression system. (*Update: Bob and Brad have come out with a Air Compression Leg Massager). I think if you are a person that wants some relief at the end of the day from working, and kind of have a treat where you don’t have to do much besides strap it on and let it go. You can put your feet up while you’re sitting on the couch and off you go.
Brad: So, I have this one, well, two. One for each leg, then there’s the pump unit, it does plug in to 110 volts. You can vary the intensity. There’s low, medium, and high.
Bob: They’re also called sequence, or you could do the whole thing at once.
Brad: Right, now I’ve got it on sequence. It compresses differently on the foot and then on the calf. It has a sequence where it goes back and forth versus compression on the whole thing. It’s not squishing my legs so it’s painful. Again, you can adjust it through different levels, but I can feel it. It’s kind of nice. I get some of that pressure on the arch of my foot on the bottom, which feels good and the top.
Bob: Well, my daughter tried one of these and she liked the compression. Now, if you are an athlete, they did a study called “A Randomized Controlled Trial of Massage and Pneumatic Compression for Ultramarathon Recovery.” So, these are people that were running ultra-marathons. What is that, about 50 miles?
Brad: 50 to a hundred.
Bob: Oh geez. So, after they were done, they used this for 20 minutes and it did give then relief, subjectively.
Brad: Yeah, felt good, oh yeah.
Bob: But over the next seven days, they didn’t find much difference between not doing anything and using this.
Brad: Except for feeling good. No recovery, nothing that they could measure.
Bob: So, it was one study. I know that the marathoner in our group, Mike, he really likes it. I mean, he’s using it, but we can’t say studies support it. Besides it feels good.
Brad: Yeah, anecdotal.
Bob: Right.
Brad: Which, there’s nothing wrong with it. If it doesn’t hurt something.
Bob: And as they come up with some studies it shows that it does help. These things are not going to hurt anything, that’s the positive thing about them. So, very good, again if you work all day on your feet, honest living, this is going to help you. Thanks!
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any hints for Morton's Neuroma?