Link #128: 25% Of Bones In The Body Are In Your Feet!

Feb 8, 2016

Link #128: 25% Of Bones In The Body Are In Your Feet!

Broken bones can be a very painful and inconvenient experience. Not only does it hurt but you also get decommissioned or severely limited in terms of movement for a considerable of time. In children, however, broken bones heal much faster than they do in adults. As explained in our previous post, this is because their bones are much more flexible and pliant.

In contrast, when it comes to broken bones in adults, the older the individual is the longer and more difficult it is for the bones to mend. More importantly, the vast majority of broken bones, in adults, occur in the feet and ankle regions. This is only natural though. Why? It’s because 25 percent of all the bones in your body are concentrated in your feet and ankles.

How Many Bones Are There In Your Feet?

Foot Anatomy. Author: BruceBlaus/CC BY 3.0

There are 26 different bones in each of your foot and ankle combination. This means that both of your feet and ankles combine to comprise 52 different bones. Since your body has a total of 206 bones, 52 bones in your foot and ankles amount to about 25 percent of the total.

However, these aren’t the only bones that your foot contains. There are other types of bones known as sesamoid bones located all over your body including your feet. Sesamoid bones are those bones that are embedded inside tendons or muscles. Technically, these types of bones aren’t counted as bones when it comes to the total number of bones in the body or even in the feet.

The feet also contain anything between 20 to 25 percent of the total joints in the human body. There are 33 joints in each of your foot while the whole of your body contains anything between 250 to 300 joints. The reason why the exact number of joints in the human body isn’t clear is that there are multiple definitions of a joint.

Additionally, your feet are home to more than 100 ligaments, tendons, and muscles along with numerous types of soft tissue, skin, nerves, and blood vessels.

Why Is The Foot So Elaborate?

The foot is one of the hardiest, sturdiest, and most overworked parts of our body. It’s responsible for multiple tasks ranging from propelling the body and balancing the body to absorbing shock from the resultant movement. To achieve these ends, the feet and ankle need to be structurally strong and mechanically complex.

For example, if you were to go for a run for a kilometer, your foot would have to handle forces equivalent to those created by tons of material during the whole run. Their importance, their inherent complexity, and their interdependence with other parts of the body make feet significantly susceptible to developing as well as causing health problems.

For example, some problem with feet can end up causing problems in other parts of the body with the back being especially susceptible. Similarly, when other parts of the body develop some health problem, the feet often end up with different types of symptoms.