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Whether you're an avid marathoner or simply enjoy the occasional jog, it's important to know when to change your shoes. If you keep running on worn-down soles, you risk incurring injuries that warrant an otherwise avoidable trip to the foot doctor. There is no uniform answer to the question of when to replace your sneakers, as it depends on everything from how much you run to the condition of your feet. Use this guide to determine if it's time for a new pair.

A Guide to Replacing Your Sneakers

General Advice

The prevailing wisdom is that you should change shoes about every 350 to 500 miles. For some people, this equates to buying a new pair every six months to a year. Some write down the d...

Feet are a very important part of your body – probably more important than you realise in everyday life. When you have in injury or problem in your feet you realise how difficult it is to function without them. Our feet also go through a lot – dirt, germs, dirty socks and what not.

Some things can lead to trouble in our feet. Infections, bone disorders, muscle problems can become common and difficult to deal with. Here are a few common foot conditions that many people suffer from and their treatments.

Flat Foot

Flat foot is a condition where people do not have the arch in the middle of their foot and the entire sole touches the ground. Flat feet can cause pain in the foot and also ...

Thanks to the nature of our sport, we can suffer some painful foot conditions at times. One of the more common ones: the bunion. A bunion is an (often unsightly) protuberance at the base of your big toe. It forms when the metatarsophalangeal joint (MTP for short) is stressed over a prolonged period of time, causing the first metatarsalto turn outward and the big toe to point inward. The resulting protrusion can be painful—especially when it chafes within shoes. Some people can also form a bunion at the base of the pinky toe, as well, known as a bunionette (and sometimes misdiagnosed as a Tailor’s bunion).

Identifying Symptoms of Bunions

Bunions are fairly easy to identify. If y...

Ingrown toenails hurt, and the sharp pain and pressure they cause can make each stride unbearable, forcing you to skip running for days.

“An ingrown toenail occurs when the corner or border of a toenail—most commonly the big toe—impinges or otherwise irritates the surrounding soft tissue of the toe, resulting in painful inflammation that can puncture the skin and cause acute infection,” says Michael J. Trepal, a podiatrist at the New York College of Podiatric Medicine.

Here’s everything you need to know about why you get ingrown toenails, how to get rid of them, and how to prevent them so you never miss a day of training again.

What Causes Ingrown Toenails?

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A new approach to preventing gout attacks looks promising for people not already helped by existing treatments. Researchers are looking at an anti-inflammatory drug called canakinumab (Ilaris) to treat this painful form of arthritis.

Instead of targeting excessively high uric acid levels as existing gout drugs do, the new strategy aims to reduce overall inflammation. The drug goes after a specific inflammatory molecule called interleukin-1.

The result was a 50 percent drop in gout attack risk, the researchers found. "This was a very large effect," said study lead author Dr. Daniel Solomon, a rheumatologist with Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

He acknowledged it was "very surpri...

Yoga is traditionally done barefoot, and most yogis would probably cringe at the thought of wearing shoes or even socks during their practice. #FreeTheFoot, amirite people? In all seriousness, though, you're probably really accustomed to doing yoga barefoot and don't even give it a second thought at this point — but that might not always be the best idea, according to at least one expert.

I don't know about you, but I think there's something very liberating about being barefoot, whether it's during yoga or even when you're just hanging out around the house. "The fat on the bottom of your foot is the only cushion between your foot bones and the floor." In other words, you know those one-...

Many jobs require employees to constantly lift, move and work with heavy objects, all while standing for long periods of time. When all of these factors are coupled, it can result in potentially fatal injuries that start with the feet and work their way up the body, affecting knees, hips and backs. Foot injuries can cause enormous backlash for both the employee and employer. For example, with employees, an injury resulting in permanent or long-term foot damage can hinder their ability to work, while employers can be left paying immense amount of workers compensation.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 53,000 foot injuries per year leading to missed work days. Th...

Here are some tips to keep in mind when shopping for new shoes:

Your child’s feet change with age

Shoe and sock sizes may change every few months as a child’s feet grow. Be sure to have the size checked at a minimum of every six months.

Shoes that don’t fit properly can aggravate the feet

Always be sure to measure your child’s feet before purchasing a new pair of shoes and watch for signs of irritation (including swelling, blisters or redness) after the initial use.

Ditch the hand-me-downs

Just because a shoe size fits one child comfortably doesn’t mean it will fit another the same way. Also, sharing shoes can spread fungal infections such as athlete’s foot and...

Your foot and leg pain can be related to heart disease. In honour of the many men and women who are diagnosed with heart disease, we thought we’d talk about the connection between the feet and heart.