Long distance thru hikes and feet growth / swelling

"Most of you who have knee pain after running or hiking have pathologically weak hip rotators."

+1

My wife just resolved major, nearly debilitating, knee pain with a regimen of hip stabilization exercises. Took about 4 weeks, a lot of floor time, and a lot if whining, but the prospect of exploratory surgery is a thing of the past.

ITB issues? Hip stabilization worked for me. (And a small bit of gait training.)

We find it incredibly interesting that as active as we are, those #$%@*&* hip stabilizers have the audacity to turn into slackers.

"As for our ancestors marching around in sandals or barefeet…those would be some nasty looking feet. Very flat. Calloused. Broad in the forefoot. Calves would be huge"

birthdayshoes.com/what-a-natural-human-foot-looks-like-if-you-never-wear-shoes

Jennifer,
Thanks for that link!

"Then there's the constant force of bearing weight that causes the fat pads cushioning the bottom of the feet to thin out.

"Even if you get fatter and heavier, the fat pads still get thinner, … When this happens, they can absorb less shock, which can make feet sore and painful after time."

I'm dealing with this now. I can attest that additional body fat doesn't end up under your feet.

If anyone has "been there done that" I'm open to suggestions.

Jennifer: so by using the hip abductor/adductor (sp.?) weight machines at the gym, I'm helping to stabilize my knees, correct?

These are machines where I sit and pump weights on the inner and outer parts of my thighs.

Hi Jennifer

I am very much aware that my knowledge about feet is limited. So I too am trying to learn.

> But long bones absolutely do not grow in length once growth plates are closed. It is impossible.
I am willing to believe, but that leaves me without a scientific explanation of why I, my wife, and many others too experience an increase in shoe size of 1.2 – 2 units after long walks. The experimental facts are there: what is the explanation? Maybe the cartilage or tendons between the bones grow? After all, noses and ears keep growing all our life.
But, bottom line from observation: walkers' feet do get bigger. The medical explanations can catch up later.

> It is NOT the realm of the unfit.
I was really talking about ankles and feet here. Knees and hips – maybe a different story there.

> Most of you who have knee pain after running or hiking have pathologically weak hip rotators.
Little or no experience there. If those are 'relatively small support muscles', OK. But I can't help feeling that our ancestors managed just fine – at least with walking all day. Running all day – some reservations. I don't think Homo Sapiens evolved for that.

> try to do a single leg squat and see where your knee goes. Does it fall in a bit?
Geez girl, you play rough! I think I would just fall over!

> As for our ancestors marching around in sandals or barefeet…those would be some nasty looking feet. Very flat. Calloused. Broad in the forefoot. Calves would be huge (that's where the muscles that control your feet are). People who grew up wearing shoes outside, and most of the time in general…we have nice dynamic arches that absorb force when you bear weight (by literally sinking closer to the ground, thus lengthening your foot) and returning to neutral when you are not.

OK, I am going to disagree with you here at several levels.

First of all, I totally reject the idea that any such feet would look 'nasty'. They might not conform to the Western ideal of small neat compact feet, but that is purely a myth of the last century. Go back a bit further and they would be normal. 'Huge calves' would also be the norm in those days. Normal ain't 'nasty'.

Second, trying to use the idea that the product of wearing shoes all the times is necessarily a better thing is just absurd imho. That is equivalent to saying that one or two centuries (no more!) of shoe wearing replaces many hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution. I don't buy that for one minute.

Look in any Woman's Magazine, and count the number of advertisements for foot baths, foot salts, Dr Scholls massage sandals, etc etc. You don't get these in 'Men's magazines'. All these are due to the well-known propensity of women in general to buy shoes which are a size too small for their feet, in search of 'foot beauty'. Yes, it's a behaviour which is well known in the shoe trade. No-one publicises it because it is responsible for most womens buying lots of new shoes in search of 'comfort', and who wants to inhibit sales?

Cheers

In addition to some muscles, and foot flattening, could it be an adaptation due to stress of the interstitial fluid in the feet, for "lubrication"? That is pretty adaptable. Seems like if would be pretty easy to resolve with before and after x-ray or MRIs. Jennifer, maybe you could get a paper out of it :-) You have access to many through hikers here, and you probably have access to some radiologists.

Feet are pretty important adaptively (using that word now in the evolutionary sense) and I wouldn't be surprised if some odd things can happen in the bones of feet that don't happen elsewhere. Best to get some (internal) before and after data. On the other hand I would be surprised if that data did not already exist somewhere in the literature, more specifically relating to increased walking rather than age. Though perhaps the effects are similar to aging as you implied above.

—-RETRACTED—-

I was upset that Roger dismissed me with the word "stupid" early on in this thread.

I made a "pissy-pants" comment here.

Considering I have personally gained a lot from Rogers contributions here and on other sites, I am just gonna get over it.

Nothing to see here. Keep moving.

—-RETRACTED—-

For starters, long bones (which would include the metatarsals of your feet and your toe bones) do not lengthen once you stop growing. Here is an easy primer on bone lengthening: http://www.mananatomy.com/basic-anatomy/growth-long-bone

The actual causes of your foot lengthening as you age are varied, but sorry, do not include longer bones. Let's look at a skeletal image of the foot (the side view is of the inside of your foot, looking out)

Notice a few things: first of all, just how high the bony structure of your arch really is. There's a long way to go from the top of the longitudinal arch to the ground. It doesn't take a physicist to realize how much length that would add to your foot if that arch completely flattens.

Secondly, see the black lines in the mid foot (overhead picture)? Those are the various joints of your mid foot, and their job is to rotate to accommodate uneven surfaces.

Here is a picture of the ligaments that pass from your calf under your foot:

All your life, every step you take, those ligaments and tendons stretch out (as your arch lowers to absorb force) then need a good deal of elasticity to spring back into place for the next step. Guess what your body loses as it ages??? Elasticity. Your skin, tendons, etc all suffer from a decrease in elasticity as you age. So guess what? All those spaces between all those bones, including those that hold up the bony arch, don't spring back like they used to. Little by little your arch gets a bit lower to the ground, the spaces between the bones get bigger (as the ligaments between the bones loosen), and your foot takes up more space.

As for thru hikers, that is a lot of cumulative stress placed on the elastic and dynamic components of the foot. They don't have nearly as much time to recover their elasticity as what we are used to (because as was mentioned earlier, most of us don't normally walk 25-35 miles a day, every day, all day…). Sometimes you can recover it after a few months, sometimes you can't (and then end up with permanently longer/wider feet).

And Roger, I'm a tad disappointed to hear you bring up the "our ancestors" argument as to why we don't need shoes….the fact is that YOU grew up wearing shoes, so your own bones and muscles developed in shod feet (or at least mine did…and most people in the first world). So as your growth plates closed, your muscles adapted, your neural connections and balance centers learned to walk, and run, and jump…you did that while wearing shoes. Or maybe you didn't, but again, most of us did. And unless you are hunting and foraging for food all day, skinning hides to make your shelter, etc, your little supportive muscles all over your body, not just the hip ones, are going to not work so well. Compared to our ancestors even of just a few hundred years ago we are totally soft physically. I'm pretty sure a marathon champion would not be able to chop down a huge tree, drag it home, chop it up, skin a moose, plow his own field….you get my drift?

Knees and hips? It's a whole kinetic chain my friend. Your hips control the rotation and alignment of your knees, which control the rotation of your tibia, which have a direct connection to the movement of your arch. So having weak hips, which sooooo many of us do, actually can lead to a markedly decreased ability of your arch to spring back once unloaded.

As for western ideals of feet..you totally misunderstood me. It was not a judgement on the attractiveness of such appendages…I work with feet a lot. Pretty feet, handsome feet, calloused feet…They smell, they are sweaty, they have fungus, thickened yellow toenails, wounds… Sorry, they're nasty.

:)

EDIT: added bit about thru hikers, to address the OP

We've long passed the point where, in Wikipedia, someone would insert "citation needed", so I provide citations for the following on the topic of prehistoric footwear use.

Summarized by Bruce Bower in Science News, July 3, 2010:

A new find has given archaeologists a rare foothold on Copper Age life. Excavations of an Armenian cave have uncovered the oldest known leather shoe, a slip-on, lace-up model from roughly 5,500 years ago. It’s about the size of a woman’s size 7 today.

Summarized by Bruce Bower in Science News, April 7, 2007:

Excavations have yielded a 40,000-year-old partial human skeleton, . . . at Tianyuan Cave, located 56 kilometers southwest of Beijing. . . . the Chinese skeleton displays the oldest known evidence of regular footwear use, Trinkaus says. The specimen's strong legs contrast with an unusually delicate toe that must have been protected from the stress of barefoot walking, he asserts.

You can get on their website to follow those summaries to the original academic papers or conference presentations.

David here: So while Air Jordans haven't been around long enough to effect human evolution much (somewhat, if anyone has been shot and killed in a $200 shoe robbery), footwear HAS been around long enough to effect both the foot development of individual humans AND the genetics of humans as a species.

"That is equivalent to saying that one or two centuries (no more!) of shoe wearing replaces many hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution. I don't buy that for one minute."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/science/10shoe.html?_r=0

Oops. David beat me to it.

Hi Jennifer

Great diagrams – thanks. I think I can see which tendons I may have ripped once or twice …

> All those spaces between all those bones, including those that hold up the bony
> arch, don't spring back like they used to. Little by little your arch gets a bit
> lower to the ground, the spaces between the bones get bigger (as the ligaments
> between the bones loosen), and your foot takes up more space.
Yes, I can see that, but it is not just a case of taking up more space. If that was the whole story then you could squeeze your feet back into small shoes without harm – which is not the case for me!

OK, so maybe my arch has dropped a few millimetres – maybe. Sure looks pretty high still though. And lacing up the top holes in some joggers can create a bit of pain at the top of the arch.

> the fact is that YOU grew up wearing shoes, so your own bones and muscles developed
> in shod feet
Rush to judgement there! Nope, I have worn flip-flops or thongs for most of my life, from Uni days. Work did not approve (OHS) for m a n y years, but I still did.

> I'm pretty sure a marathon champion would not be able to chop down a huge tree,
> drag it home, chop it up, skin a moose,
I am not a marathon champion, and we don't have moose in Oz, but I still do our firewood collection as described. If I don't, there's no wood for the fire in winter! OK, we may be talking about different levels of fitness.

> As for western ideals of feet..you totally misunderstood me. … Sorry, they're nasty.
ROTFLMAO!

> Compared to our ancestors even of just a few hundred years ago we are totally soft physically.
Must relate a local (true) story. Sweet young thing joins walking club to broaden her scope. Signs up for a walk, then discovers that most of the other walkers on that trip are all 'old'. Consults friend (a more experienced club member). Don't worry, she is told: they are all nice people. So off she goes on the walk, and she finds that those old folk ARE all very nice people: they wait patiently for her on top of every hill.
Some of our active club walkers here are in their 80s. Dunno what their feet look like tho'!

I don't think we are that far apart, except for terminology. I don't like the word 'collapse' for the natural spring of a (fit) foot arch, and I still don't have an explanation for why so many walkers develop very wide feet which cannot be safely compressed, but otherwise …

Yeah, we need a good BPL article on feet!

Cheers

When I was in my early 20s, my arches had collapsed,my feet were flat. I also had severe PF.

I got orthotics that re-shaped my foot, put arch back into it over time. Feet are very moldable. ( As a side-note, no..someone elses idea of a perfect arch isnt perfect for your foot, but its better than no arch.)

At that time, I wore about a size 10-10.5, and lifting heavy weights.

I have worn those orthotics every day for 20+ yrs, my feet are molded to them. My arches, have not dropped one bit since. In fact, arch was put back INTO my foot.

But my shoe size has increased to 11.5-12.

I also weigh 50 lbs less than I did then.

Feet get bigger, when used a lot. And its NOT just from arches falling. Its also not just from increased body weight. Maybe joints get larger, cartilege thickens, bones thicken, I dont know, but it does happen.

"Yes, I can see that, but it is not just a case of taking up more space. If that was the whole story then you could squeeze your feet back into small shoes without harm – which is not the case for me!"

Roger I'm not really sure why you are so puzzled by this…

No matter how much I try, I can't fit into the pants I used to wear in college (but yet I still hang on to them!). My bones got no bigger, I did not grow any taller…but all that soft tissue seems to have expanded a bit. And no, I cannot just squeeze into those smaller-sized pants despite my intense desire to do so.

There is more to your body than bones and muscles. The size of the muscles in your feet are pretty inconsequential, but yes, they certainly will contribute to the width. But the chief culprit to longer and wider feet as you age is the progressive loosening of the tendons and ligaments that hold all those bones together (and you can see there are a lot of them!). It is not just empty space in there – our bodies are full of connective tissue that takes up space. Imagine what your foot would be like if the bones had no other support in there, no fat pads, just loose bones flopping around. Anatomy doesn't work that way.

As for the arch, again, it has a bony structure (which is static) and muscles that dynamically support it. Your tibialis posterior is the primary muscle involved in maintaining the height of the arch and has to act eccentrically every time you step in order to control the drop of the arch (which, again, is what you WANT to happen to absorb force). A thru hiker is going to have a fabulously conditioned tibialis posterior that will allow a great deal of excursion of that arch each and every time he or she steps down. As you age, the TP will not be as elastic and will simply be unable to exact as much eccentric force on the arch, thus allowing it to fall more than it did during stance.

Secondly, look at the difference in your forefoot during non weight bearing and then during weight bearing. There is a great deal of splaying that happens. It is most noticeable in terms of width, but it also happens lengthwise. There is a reason shoe salesmen always measured your feet in standing, not sitting. There is movement of your foot in all directions when you put weight through it.

So over time, all that splaying and arch falling adds up. As your muscles don't recover as well as they did, and neither do the other elastic components of your foot. The joints stiffen as well, and you end up with a stiff foot that is wider and longer than it used to be.

I'm looking for a basic biomechanics reference for you – this is not rocket science stuff, just very basic textbook stuff.

I have found this thread very interesting.

But I think I should stop reading now for fear that I will have to go out and buy larger boots, shoes, and ski boots… would cost a fortune.

I wish to continue tho inhabit my world of having the same size feet and waring the same size shoe as when I was in college… about 45 years ago.

Billy

The Hiking Engine by Stuart Plotkin

After many years of hiking and hiking with other people, I’ve concluded that the shoe industry is fundamentally broken and the cause of untold suffering in the hiking world. There are huge individual differences between people’s feet: people have hammer toes, bunions, calluses, corns, thickened nails, bone spurs, flat feet, one foot bigger than another, etc. These people aren’t the minority, but the majority. They’re us.
The Hiking Engine: a hiker’s guide to the care and maintenance of feet and legs by Stuart Plotkin is a book about preventing and alleviating the foot, ankle, knee, and leg issues that plague hikers and backpackers. Published in 2001, this book is undeniably dated with information about leather boot selection from a bygone era when leather boots were still primarily made by hand
But, this book is not without merit . The second half of the book catalogs every foot ailment you can imagine (see below), along with symptoms, recommended prevention, and treatment suggestions.
• Achilles Tendon pain
• Athletes foot
• Bleeding under toe nails
• Blisters
• Bone spurs
• Broken Sesamoids
• Broken toes
• Bunions
• Calluses
• Corns
• Dislocated toes
• Hammer toes
• Heel spurs
• Metatarsal fractures
• Plantar Fasciitis
• Thickened toe nails
• Turf Toe
Having suffered from many of these ailments on and off over the years and dealing with a mild case of Hammer Toe today, there’s nothing out of date about the information or recommendations provided by Plotkin when it comes to feet and how to address each of these common foot problems.
If you love to hike, but are plagued by chronic foot pain and discomfort, The Hiking Engine might be able to give you some answers and relief, or at least set you on the right path to getting the help you need.

Hi Jennifer

Please take all this as an interesting academic debate about medical theory. It is not an ad-hominem attack by any means.

> Roger I'm not really sure why you are so puzzled by this…
Well, medical textbook THEORY says that my feet stopped growing around 20? OK, that's current theory.

But observed fact is that my feet, and those of many others, have apparently grown in length by about 1.5 sizes and in width from (say) D to 4E after long thru-hikes. That is observed fact. I find it very hard to believe my arches have flattened so much that the increase in length is explained solely by arch flattening. If anything, the tops of my arches have grown a shade higher, and my ankles look more solid. (Tested by retrying some old dress shoes I still have.) And the suggestion that 'The joints stiffen as well, and you end up with a stiff foot that is wider and longer than it used to be.' does not sit real well with the observed flexibility I still have in my feet. (I do a range of foot flexibility exercises every morning.) I suspect that others may feel the same way.

In the Physics world we have some really core tenets, and one of the most prominent is that theory gives way to experiment. When the text books clash with the observed data, it is the text book which gets junked. It's how science progresses.

Another thing to remember is that text books are only the opinions of the authors, and those opinions are often based on what the authors learnt when they were young. Pick up an older text book and you will find many statements invalidated by later research findings. So yes, I am challenging this accepted wisdom that feet cannot grow after adulthood is reached.

We KNOW that bones are living organs which can heal from injury, and we KNOW that bone growth responds to pressure (via a piezo-electric influence), and we know that bone density is influenced by force loading. These are observed facts. It is not a huge step beyond them to suggest that bones in feet might grow a little when subjected to a long hard exercise regime – even if the text books say otherwise.

> As you age, the TP will not be as elastic and will simply be unable to exact as
> much eccentric force on the arch, thus allowing it to fall more than it did during stance.
Fair enough in theory, but I suggest that fitness might be a more significant factor than age here. The foot of an unfit teenager might flex (or 'collapse') under load far more than the foot of a fit 60 year old marathon runner or thru-hiker. But this dynamic flex does not explain the observed fact of significant and permanent growth in foot size from long thru-hikes.

Cheers

@roger, somewhat off topic but I would love to hear what your morning foot flexibility exercises are. I have been looking around the internet trying to come up with the same for the past month or so. However, for some reason I don't trust everything I read on the internet. Sounds like yours might be well tested.

Actually Roger I am not at all taking this as an attack; I happen to enjoy good scientific discussions. But it's not like the science of bone growth is new, or controversial, or even much debated any longer. It's pretty well established fact. If you, or anyone else cares to sift through a very thorough chapter on bone formation, adaptation, etc, please see this: http://www.springer.com/cda/content/document/cda_downloaddocument/9783642023996-c1.pdf?SGWID=0-0-45-1356540-p173959977

I'm so disappointed in your reasoning, however, that just because you observe feet seemingly getting bigger, and you yourself feel your arch is higher and your foot more flexible…do you have any actual data to back this up? No. You have shoe sizes. Which means you may or may not have been wearing the correct shoe size before, but after hiking you have less tolerance for wearing too-small shoes. You also do not have any X-rays with actual bone measurements to show that the long bones in your foot are longer, or that the solid bones are bigger, etc. You do not know for sure if your foot is more flexible, etc. You have anecdotal perceptions, not even measurements, and you should know that this is literally the worse and least reliable type of data.

This is a controversial point in leg length discrepancies as well – so many people have been told their pelvises are out of alignment, or that one leg is longer/shorter than the other measured by observation. The fact is we can only measure these things with actual X-rays: marking one end of a bone then the other…then measuring. Any external measurement of your leg length – or of your foot – has to take into consideration swelling, ligamentous laxity, osteophyte formation, callous formation, muscle development/tone, etc. It's a very complicated ecosystem.

The reason pregnant women end up with larger feet is not at all because of muscle development, or bone growth – if anything she is sacrificing bone density for the sake of her fetus. This happens because a pregnant woman releases a hormone called Relaxin which, you guessed it, relaxes ligaments in order to allow the otherwise solid pelvis to open up during birth. The problem is that Relaxin doesn't just affect the pelvis…it affects the whole body. So now you have pathologically lax ligaments combined with the extra weight of pregnancy and voila…the feet spread out.

As a witness to this discussion between Jennifer and Roger, I suggest that you both may be right, but you have a confusion of terminology.

Jennifer says that long foot bones don't grow beyond a certain age. Roger says that his feet have grown a good deal in size beyond a certain age.

You see the terminology shift? There are two different things here.

–B.G.–

Hi Mark

Herewith. Caution: for most of these exercises, start gently with a lower number of reps. You will notice that the exercises start at the ankles and work up to the head.

Lying on back on bed or sofa (half awake…)
Waggle feet up and down 20x
Waggle feet sideways 20x (ie try to make soles face each other)
Rotate feet CW 20x (try to keep legs still)
Rotate feet CCW 20x (try to keep legs still)

Lift knees up, put feet on surface near backside
Straighten L knee to point L foot over head, 20x (good for lower back problems)
Straighten R knee to point R foot over head, 20x (good for lower back problems)

Flatten legs down again
Lift whole L leg up to point over head 20x
Lift whole R leg up to point over head 20x

Lie sideways with underneath knee bent for stability
Lift L leg up as high as possible 20x
Roll over, repeat for R leg 20x
(Caution: do this exercise gently for first few weeks, as your hip muscles will not be in good shape at start – as Jennifer has warned.)

Lie flat, sit up with legs straight and touch toes 20x
(I touch my wrist to my toes; some may not get that far while others may get further.)

Stand up.
Deep squats using fingertips for balance 30x
Feet apart, touch floor 20x
(I put palm to floor for 10x, then alternate between touching the floor outside each foot 10x)
Feet apart, flex sideways without rotation running hand down outside of leg, each side, 20x
Feet apart, arms horizontal with fingertips touching, rotate 2x to L and then 2x to R using things behind you as markers, 20x

With medium hand weights:
Forearm curls 30x (very good for RSI of wrist)
Lift both arms from sides up over head to almost touch 30x (mind fingers!)
Lift both arms horizontal out at sides, then swing in to front and back 30x (this can be hard at first)

Windmill arms forward 20x (sweep as wide as possible and lift shoulders, interleave arms, good for pack straps)
Windmill arms backwards 20x

Imagine dunces hat on head, rotate head and hat in circle CW 20x
Rotate head in circle CCW 20x
Rotate head CW once (this last nulls out the upset to the estachian tubes from previous rotations)

Breakfast.

Cheers

Hi Jennifer

> I happen to enjoy good scientific discussions.
Oh Good! Leaps in…

> But it's not like the science of bone growth is new, or controversial, or even much
> debated any longer. It's pretty well established fact.
Hum … so was the Ptolomaic geocentric universe, the theory of phlogiston, the theory of the ether, the … For that matter, so was Newtonian mechanics. But each was overthrown by facts. And there are plenty of established medical theories which have been overturned. No, I am not a respecter of text book authority. :-)

> just because you observe feet seemingly getting bigger, and you yourself feel your
> arch is higher and your foot more flexible…do you have any actual data to back this
> up? No. You have shoe sizes. Which means you may or may not have been wearing the
> correct shoe size before, but after hiking you have less tolerance for wearing
> too-small shoes.
> You have anecdotal perceptions, not even measurements, and you should know that
> this is literally the worse and least reliable type of data.
Well, the comment about the value of anecdotal data is conceded. However, is it all just anecdotal? Let's see.

Way back when I was a junior researcher I bought some nice leather Rockport shoes for presentations to funding committees. They fitted just fine. Then I got more senior (and stroppy) and stopped bothering about shoes – and continued to pull in ~$0.5M per year despite the lack of shoes. So the shoes sat unused in the cupboard for many long years. Then I started doing long thru hikes and my feet grew in size. For some reason (daughter wedding maybe) I tried those same shoes on one day. I could not get my feet in them. No, the shoes had not shrunk: the leather was still in good condition. The same applies to some nice well-fitting leather Scarpa boots we both had, left over from undergraduate days. Not a chance we could get our feet in them now.

So while I may not have calibrated X-ray images of my feet, I think I can say that I do have enough Go/NoGo measurements to say that my feet have grown.

Similar comments apply to arch height. We tried some older joggers from our pre-thru-hike era and found that they were not only too small, but also the lacing across the top had to be greatly relaxed. Granted, this 'measurement' is a bit softer, but the perception for both of us was of growth, not collapse.

In addition, many others have seen the same growth. This thread started off by asking about this well-known behaviour of feet after long thru-hikes. So while the text books may all sing the same hymn, out on the track it seems a bit different.

Thought: maybe the bones have not grown by very much. Maybe it's the cartiledge between all the bones which actually grows thicker when loaded up by a long hike? This is not impossible under current medical theory. It would account for the observed facts.

Cheers

"No, the shoes had not shrunk: the leather was still in good condition."

Roger, I don't think that this is completely logical. There is a lot more to a shoe than just the leather on the outside. I've had shoes that looked new on the outside, yet the actual space inside had shrunk. This is especially true if the time period is long.

–B.G.–

All l am really arguing is that long bones have no way to grow once the growth plates close. Yes, feet get bigger and wider as they are stressed in life…but it ain't because the long bones are growing longer.

Why don't you keep getting taller then?

Bone lengthening procedures on adults involve breaking the bone and continuing to break it as osteoclasts bridge the gap to heal. If a child has a fracture through a growth plate…disaster. The bone stops growing.

If you can find me a single article even doubting the physiology behind long bone growth I'll concede your point. Its pretty easy to see histologically, experimentally…it's just not controversial. It's not like we're discussing aliens, or a new mechanism for cancer…

As far as the overall foot growth, I've discussed several reasons why your feet grow with age and with stress….I never said they didn't. I just said your long bones didn't get longer. The reasons have to do with ligamentous laxity, osteophyte formation, increased intertarsal space (wider splaying) and arch collapse (both statically and dynamically).

Roger, Thanks for the morning workout list.

I think I'm going to have to side with Jennifer on this one, FWIW. My cue was as soon the overturn of the Ptolemaic world view was invoked as an example of how things are not always certain. I have been subjected to this response from people trying to argue for aliens, and other crazy stuff. In the worst case scenario when things slide into the nut job-crackpot extreme I have heard people argue that violating well-establish scientific understanding is EVIDENCE for correctness of beliefs. But, of course we are no where near there on THIS thread.

Yes things are always uncertain to a degree, but some things are far more certain that others, I think what Jennifer is describing is what has been observed and worked out and understood all the way down at the fundamental cellular level, with controls, peer review, dissection and all the way to molecular biology at the genetic level. The data we have from through hikers is that the outside of the foot gets bigger, though other than shoe size and width we don't have any other metrics or internal information.

I don't see any parity here at all between the sides if the sides are bone growth vs no bone growth. I think until you have some extraordinary evidence of what happen in the foot, I would have to put my money on the last 100 years of systematic research.

The way Jennifer is responding is how every other scientist would respond – "your hypothesis doesn't fit what we provisionally know to be true from a LOT of research. There are other possible explanations that ARE more compatible with all those observations, and you have to show me a lot more data if you want to overturn something that well established."

However, I DO see an interesting problem – exactly what IS going on? I think a quickstarter grant to pay for getting some people at the start of the PCT to sign up for a before and after X-ray of their feet might be a lot more valuable to us than the abc's of lightweight backpacking. Not that sexy though – maybe we have to have a T-shirt or something to get people motivated. LOL

Most medical research is on pathologies, so it may be that no one has ever specifically looked at what happens with before and after very long periods of walking using MRIs or X-Rays of the foot. It would seem to be a hole in the research in the sense that to resolve the large scale physiological changes would be easy today, if not the mechanisms responsible for the changes.

There is always a *very* small chance of there being real scientific meat here. Looking at what Jennifer said in another way, if by some miracle the bones DID grow, then that would easily be a paper in Nature or Science, possibly make someone career if it tuned out to be true, and actually a MAJOR alteration in the way we would understand bone physiology. Such thing happen, but VERY rarely – in spite of the invocation of Ptolemy, or Darwin, or Einstein. It would be virtually guaranteed that if you could show this happened for real, then everyone would be looking into it, not because they gave a damn about through hikers, but the would want to learn how it happened, and then manipulate the mechanism so they could reproduce it in injured patients. And then win a Nobel prize.

I feel my feet have gotten bigger too. I'd like to read a book about it, but it sounds like it probably has not been fully looked at.

"Why don't you keep getting taller then?"

Actually I remember one through hiker saying "people get taller" from lot of hiking. LOL

Or maybe she was implying something different.

It was in one of the videos about the PCT, there where 3 or 4 with names like "More hiking" and "hiked" (someone will correct me). They are on iTunes.