Sponging your legs and feet boosts circulation in these extremities and oxygenates tissues that need help.

Sponging:

Sponges can absorb liquids and expel them. Put a dry sponge in a bowl of water, and it will absorb the water until it is saturated. Squeeze or wring the saturated sponge, and 90% of the water will be expelled.

You can use the sponge to clean up a mess and clean your sponge by squeezing it, immersing it in clean water, letting it absorb the water, pressing it again, and dipping it again. You can do this over and over until the sponge is clean.

Ok, this is simple, and everyone has done this. But there’s a principle here that bears further investigation. See, the sponge is a type of pump drawing water in and expelling it. In fact, you can empty a bowl and fill another one next to it by saturating the sponge with water from the filled bowl and wringing it out over the empty bowl.

Eventually, you will have emptied one bowl and filled another with the pumping action of your sponge – aided by your hand’s squeezing and relaxing.

Certain parts of your body work like a sponge responding to mechanical actions.

Your heels and the balls of your feet don’t have good blood circulation. They depend on the application of pressure and its release.

Walking, for example, presses the blood out of your heels and then releases the pressure, letting fresh blood flow in. So you could say that walking works like a backup heart for your feet, especially the heels and balls of your feet.

So, lack of walking “starves” your feet of blood.

Below your knees and above your feet:

Blood flow isn’t much better in your calves and other musculature of your lower legs. The main problem is that the lower leg muscles are very dense, and the ratio of connective tissue and tendons to muscle is very high. None of this makes for easy blood flow.

Another complicating factor is that venous blood flowing up through your lower legs is more like oozing instead of pumping. This can lead to blood pooling and clotting In your lower legs. The lower leg muscles give extra help here by contracting and relaxing and acting as an extra pump.

Walking does the trick here as well.

Blood flow to your lower legs and feet is one of the main benefits of regular walking.

I believe the main benefit of walking is increased blood flow, meaning increased delivery of oxygen and nutrients to tissues and organs and picking up waste at the same time. Inactivity robs your tissues of their needs, inhibits metabolism, and encourages waste buildup.

Notice that I said “regular” walking. Going for a walk once a day might help, but spreading one hour of walking out to three twenty-minute sessions is better.

Your heart beats 100,000 times a day and pumps 2,000 gallons a day. So that’s 0.02 gallons per beat. In liters, it’s simpler. 0.02 gallons is 0.076 liters per beat. Now, say that your heart beats 70 times per minute. That means you pump 70 x .076 liters per minute through your heart, or 5.3 liters per minute.

The average person has 4.5 to 5.7 liters of blood in their body. So roughly, a blood cell makes a round trip through your body once every minute. I know this is a rough estimate and an oversimplification, but exactness is not the point here.

One hour of walking provides your body and organs with one cleaning. Three twenty-minute walks give you three cleanings – three times the value and the same amount of time.

Let’s go back to the sponge example. A dirty one. We will dip it in clean water and squeeze it three times. Which squeeze removes the most soil, the first dip and squeeze or the third dip and squeeze?

Here’s the key: In a one-hour walk, the first twenty minutes of circulation delivers a lot of goods and picks up a lot of trash. The second twenty minutes, not as much, and the third twenty minutes, probably very little.

So, the highest return of value is the first twenty minutes. So why not make all your walking sessions like the first twenty minutes each time you walk? This is a value proposition. If the point of walking is getting your circulation going, then doing it three times a day is three times better than once.

Every minute you walk returns less value than the one that preceded it. So your time is better spent in three twenty-minute sessions of walking. After twenty minutes, most of the therapeutic value of walking has been gained.

Add Manual Sponging to your walking routine.

I do this sponging routine when I awake in the morning.

  1. Heel sponging – squeeze each heel for ten seconds and release for ten seconds. Do this our times.
  2. I do the same things with the balls of my feet.
  3. Using the same timing method, I sponge my lower leg at the soleus level (see above).
  4. After these three spongings, I stand on my tip-toes four times and imagine digging my toes into the floor.
Important note:

Pay special attention to the balls of your feet. These can get bruised, and the fat layer under the surface can deteriorate with a lack of use. My morning routine is done with bare feet and a hard floor. This might be uncomfortable, but I feel that it is more therapeutic.

This morning routine eliminated my heel and ball foot pain. I’m not an expert, but this was my experience. Yes, it took a while, but it worked. I think it was all about sponging, as I described it above.

As I always say, don’t do something because I do it. Look into it and get the facts, then make the right decision for yourself.

As far as I can tell, there’s no downside to sponging your feet and a tremendous possible upside. Even if you decide not to sponge, keep up your walking routine. The increased blood circulation from walking benefits many parts of our body.

OMY1

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