Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno
Which only gets worse if you have a defective gait for whatever reason - you get a wacky wear pattern that the manufacturer could never have anticipated, and it overall gets even worse.
Case in point, my feet have extraordinarily high arches (like, I have trouble tying up shoes unless I get mens double-wide). This makes my gait unstable and I tend to roll onto the sides of my feet. I wear that part more than it's designed to, which makes the bottom of my shoes rounder, which makes me roll side to side more, and then one day I'm minding my own damn business on flat concrete and massively sprain[1] my ankle as my foot rolls right over and my ankle folds up.
I'd worn those shoes down almost to the padding, which was a terrible idea. I got scolded in the ER. I replace them more often now.
Smart materials have potential, with adaptive support and the ability to indicate when they're dangerously worn, and to tell you that you should see someone about your funny feet. Bioplas shoes that self-heal would be pretty awesome.
[1] The kind of sprain where it would have been kinder to break my ankle.
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I assume most UT societies would have easy medical care to correct such "minor" deformities and bad habitual gaits like ours.
(I have very wide, very flat "duck feet" and am sure that I jog wrongly, but curiously, walk and run adequately.
Within days of jogging a single mile, my right hip explodes with pain and injury. It blows up my blood sugar, so I know it's not "just" pain. But I'm doing fine running/walking greater distances and even slightly faster.)