Corporate Fitness and Active Aging

When you live with chronic pain, the only one who can know how much it hurts is you. Pain can be hard to describe because it’s both invisible and personal. If you can’t put into words how much pain you’re in or how it affects your life, your doctor, physical therapist or fitness trainer can’t prescribe the right treatment or exercises for you. Go through these questions to help you get the relief you need.  

What Does the Pain Feel Like?  

Be as specific as possible about how your pain feels to help your doctor figure out what is wrong.  Here are a few words you can use to describe the way your pain feels, and how your doctor might interpret them:  

• Aching, dull: muscle strains, arthritis pain  
• Shooting, electric, tingling, burning, pins-and-needles: nerve pain  
• Sharp, stabbing: injuries such as a broken bone, muscle or ligament tear, or penetrating wound 
• Throbbing: headache, abscess, gout  
• Tightness: muscle spasm

Where do you have Pain? Describe exactly where you hurt. 

Here are a few examples:   

• Deep in my shoulder joint or in the muscles near the surface. 
• Under the kneecap or in the back of the knee. 
• The outside of my hip or in my groin.  
• Is the pain in only one spot, or does it travel?  
• Does the pain remain steady, come and go, or only flare up when you move in a certain way? 

How Much Does it Hurt?  

Explain the intensity of your pain. That’s where the pain scale comes in. Your doctor will likely ask you to “rate” your pain on a scale of 0 to 10 – where 0 is pain-free and 10 is unimaginable pain. The doctor can use your score to help determine what type of treatment you may need.  

How Does the Pain Affect Your Life?  

Tell your doctor which activities you’ve had to adjust, and which ones you now avoid entirely because of your pain. The impact the pain has on your life is just as important as the pain itself.  

Examples of life changes:   

• Have you been skipping your morning walk because of the pain?  
• Are you missing out on normal activities?  
• Can you barely get out of bed in the morning?  
• Does the pain leave you so drained and depressed that you don’t want to be around people?  

When Do You Hurt?  

Try keeping a journal to help you track when in the day your pain is at its worst. The timing of pain can help your doctor fine-tune your treatment. For example, if you tell your doctor you have higher pain in the morning versus the evening, they can adjust your treatment. 

What Helps/Worsens Your Pain?  

Make note in your journal what you’ve tried to relieve the pain (rest, ice, heat, over-the-counter pain medicine). Did they ease the pain, have no effect or make it more intense?  

With a good description of your pain, your doctor will have a better chance of getting you the relief you need. But even when your doctor knows the cause of your pain, treatment might not be a quick fix. It a trial-and-error process that takes time. Be patient, but persistent.  

Oh, my aching feet! More importantly, why do my feet hurt? Let me explain further. At times in the past, the top of my foot has felt like it was being crushed by the laces of my sneakers. I logically thought that all I needed to do was loosen the laces of my sneakers and it would solve the problem. It did not help. Really, all it did was create more problems because then my sneakers felt like they were going to fall off, and then the loose-fitting sneakers began to rub on and irritate my heels. On top of that, when I did loosen the laces, the shoes would then come untied too easily.

Asking a Podiatrist

I am a runner, and having this issue was becoming extremely frustrating. I even went so far as to try new running shoes (to no avail). After all of this, I began to think there was something wrong with my feet. I asked one of my friends, who happens to be a podiatrist, his thoughts. He began by asking me to take off my sneakers. (“Ugh,” I thought to myself, because I had just run in those things, and you could only imagine my embarrassment!) This first thing he did was take the insoles out of my shoes and examine them. He didn’t look at my feet—just my shoe insoles!

Then he said to me, “You have a high instep, and we need to create more space in your sneaker.” Create more space? I was perplexed. He then began to unlace my sneakers and re-lace them, avoiding lacing the middle eyelets of each shoe. I put my sneakers back on; and to my delight, I had no pain.

From there I began to think about how lacing your sneakers differently or more creatively could alleviate pain in your feet in other scenarios as well. Turns out, there is a plethora of information on the internet that speaks to that very topic.

The Important of Shoe Fit for Seniors

I am lucky enough to have a job doing what I love. I work in an active aging community, and so often I see people suffering with painful bunions, toe or foot deformities, and even arthritis. These painful issues combined with mobility problems seem to go together with people wearing ill-fitting shoes to accommodate their foot and/or mobility concerns. I see things like people buying shoes that are too big to make it easier to slide their foot in and out of, or trying to alleviate the pressure of a shoe pressing on an already painful bunion. Ill-fitting shoes can even increase your risk for a fall, and adversely affect things like circulation or neuropathy.

If balance or painful feet are an issue for you, you should start with your doctor first and from there consider meeting with a shoe-fit specialist only after your doctor has assured you that there is nothing that needs to be medically managed first. It may be something such as a shoe that is too large or small, or even just your laces!

I came across this article in Self magazine that speaks to creative lacing techniques. It made all the difference for me, and it might for you, too!