[pct-l] Feet Swelling

[Eric Lee]

Yoshihiro wrote:
>
Today is Sunday, so I have consulted the brief handbook of mountain
medicine, because I cannot understand the swelling of feet. I had never
experienced the swelling.
>

It's important to remember that everyone's body is unique and different,
especially in regard to the feet.  There are so few people who do something
as crazy as thru-hiking that there aren't a lot of studies that address
those unique conditions.  And even if there were, I suspect the main thing a
study of thru-hikers would find is that there's a large amount of
variability from person to person.

I can think of at least two other possible reasons for foot swelling in
addition the three that Yoshihiro listed:  the grinding impact of walking
all day every day may either cause chronic inflammation or may actually
cause the tendons and connective tissues to stretch.

In any case, many (though not all) thru-hikers report that their feet go up
a size or two during their hike.  Some of those people report that their
feet never return to their former size.  People who have done a lot of
long-distance hiking already before their thru-hike often don't notice as
much (or any) change in foot size.  I don't know precisely why it happens
but it does happen.  As Miner said, swelling feet can turn shoes that were
fine on your training hikes into blister factories a few weeks into a
thru-hike.  It may or may not happen to any particular individual but it's
smart to be aware that it could happen.

Eric