Hershey's Mill Health Fair

 Podiatry Care Specialists in West Chester, PA and Newtown Square PA, were happy to join the 1st Annual Health Fair at Hershey's Mill. The Senior Helpers of Chester County ran this spectacular event. Dr Theodore Mushlin, Dr Alexandra Grulke, and Fay Mushlin, Practice Administrator, attended the event to help spread the word about Podiatric foot care. In addition, Mark Fallecker from Aetrex Shoes, brought in the iStep Scanner (Please see previous blog on this) to scan the feet of the residents at Hershey's Mill.  Some other attendees at this event were Genuardi's, (located on Boot Road in West Chester, PA), offering flu shots and giving out food, and Bayada nurses checking blood pressure and talking to the residents. It was a wonderful opportunity for the residents and very well attended.

http://www.podiatrycarespecialists.com/

iStep Foot Scanner

We are very excited at Podiatry Care Specialists to announce a new technological product in our office, the iStep Scanner by Aetrex. Have you ever wanted to know the accurate size of your foot? Or where the pressure points are in your feet? How about what type of orthotic or arch support best fits you? With the iStep Scanner, all this is possible.

The iStep is the considered one of the leading digital foot analysis tools on the market today. We are able to print out a copy of your foot type along with pressure distribution. We can also get a scanned reading of your foot length and width. We are also able to help you choose from various shoes or sneakers based on your foot type as well as help fit orthotics or arch supports that will correspond to them. We can even show you where the pressure points are and compare that scan with one that has a biomechanical device placed in your shoe gear.

Please visit our website for more information and feel free to make an appointment to have your feet examined and scanned.

http://www.podiatrycarespecialists.com/

Toning Shoes...Fad or Bad?

There has been an increase lately in the number of shoe companies that are producing these toning shoes. Some of the common ones that are out are the Skechers Shapeups, Reebok EasyTone, New Balance and the MBT's. There are also making these in sandals now. These shoes are claiming to help solve knee and back problems, tone your legs, relieve tension in the neck and ease joint pain. What are all the thoughts on this? Since some of these products are fairly new, we dont have long term studies on them. Once more long term data is out on these we will get a better idea on how these products work over the long term.

I would not recommend these shoes/sneakers to run in. I am going to post a link to a study that was done on them. A team of exercise scientists from the Exercise and Health Program at the University of Wisconsin had studied the 3 shoes above.  They evaluated muscle activation in the toning shoes vs a New Balance Running shoe as well as exercise responses.

For the exercise response the researchers had 12 patients complete 12, 5-minute exercises on a treadmill that with different speeds and gradients(inclines) with the toning shoes and a running sneaker.  For the muscle activation response, 12 patients rotated shoes at random while having electrodes tied to different muscles on the body while doing similar exercises on the treadmill.

The results showed that none of the toning shoes showed a statistically significant increase in exercise response or muscle activation on the treadmill.

As of now, I think there needs to be even more research on these toning shoes. I like how this study was performed and how it showed that there was no difference in muscle activation or exercise response on a treadmill.
Here is the link for further reading.
http://www.acefitness.org/getfit/studies/toningshoes072010.pdf

http://www.podiatrycarespecialists.com/