Most Replayed Moment: Foot Health Expert Reveals the Best Shoes for Strength and Mobility!

Steven Bartlett (0:05)

Yes. We don't do much of that these days. It seems to have gone out of fashion with all the Ubers and the other ways to get around and all the sedentary behavior that we do living and working in offices. What should we know about walking and how important it is? Because I'll be honest, I don't walk that much.

Courtney Conley (0:27)

Yes, I always say it's the most underrated, underutilized, easily accessible activity that most of us are not doing. If you think about, if you look at the research on average step count that most people globally are taking, it's about 45 to 4900, okay? Which means that there's a lot of us that are taking less than that. So when I'm working with my patients, we always look at baseline numbers. What's your baseline? So for example, if you had a person who was walking 2500 steps a day, I mean, some of us would be like, wow, that's not a lot. But for a lot of us, it is.

If you were to walk an additional 500 steps in a day, your baseline is 2500, you can reduce your risk of cardiovascular mortality by 7%.

Steven Bartlett (1:25)

Wow.

Courtney Conley (1:27)

Here's a bigger wow. If you have a thousand step increase, you can reduce your risk of all-cause mortality by 15%.

Steven Bartlett (1:38)

Dying of anything?

Courtney Conley (1:39)

All-cause mortality, 15%. That's a big number for a thousand steps.

So I have a story for you. This is a patient of mine and it just warms my heart to talk about him because when I saw him, he was two years into a diagnosis of heel pain, 27 years old. So he had gone to see a bunch of people. The last doctor that he had seen told him to limit his step count to 2,500 steps a day.

Steven Bartlett (2:16)

Why?

Courtney Conley (2:18)

To rest, to rest the foot. Now, this is chronic pain now. We're not talking acute heel pain. We are two years into this song and dance. He's being told at 27 years old to take 2,500 steps a day. He comes into my office, we're talking about all of this, and he's also a quadruplet. So, it was one of the first quadruplets I think I've ever treated. So, he has, you know, which, why I think pain is so difficult, it's so complicated, because now you have this 27-year-old who's seeing his siblings who are at 27, like, enjoy their life and doing all these things, and he's being told he can take 2,500 steps a day. So, he's now living in his father's basement.

And he's afraid to go above 2,500 steps. And he used to tell me, he's like, I cry a lot, I'm depressed, and wouldn't you be if...

So, there wasn't any magic exercise that I was going to give him two years into this. There wasn't any magic orthotic or magic shoe. He had done all of that. Shame on me if I would have done the same thing. So, we had a conversation. And I knew I needed to get him outside, and I needed to get him walking. That was my goal. Forget about the heel pain. We didn't even focus. We didn't even talk about the heel pain. I knew I needed to get him outside and start loading his foot. Two years, this foot, by the way, when you're walking, four to six times your body weight. It can handle four to six times your body weight when you're walking. But you don't load it appropriately in muscles atrophy. So I told him we had a long, long conversation. And I said, we're going to slowly start to introduce steps. And if you think about this, if we were to say, add a thousand steps a day, to some people, that might not sound like a lot. But to someone who's taking 2,500 steps, that's almost 50% of what they're doing. So we introduced the concept of a micro walk, which is a 5-minute walk. So a 5-minute walk is about 500 steps.

Steven Bartlett (4:45)

OK.

Courtney Conley (4:46)

A 10-minute walk is about a thousand steps.

Steven Bartlett (4:52)

OK.

Courtney Conley (4:52)

Right? So that makes it like a little more digestible, right? So you're talking to him, you're like, listen, all I need is 5 minutes. And so we started 5-minute walks. And for the first couple of weeks, it was, you know, there were good days, there were bad days, and there still are. But we were starting to build his confidence and movement. We were starting to get him comfortable on his foot again. And it was, you know, it was one of those cases where I just, like, I really enjoyed working with him and watching what had happened. Because if you look at step counts, I knew what number I was trying to get to. Because if you look at depression, for example, 5,000 steps a day can reduce the risk of having symptoms of depression.