Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

After realizing my foot is quite different from an average foot and heard that I need to be careful, that got me wondering, what do your foot features tell you about human health or the effect of foot features on human health. However, I am not quite sure how to test this or if this can even be a science fair project. May you please tell me how to execute this or if it doesn't work, try telling me how to do a similar project. Thank You

Hi,

That is an intriguing subject you want to study and one that I am not very familiar with. I am assuming that you are talking about foot abnormalities that are genetic like clubfoot rather than the result of injury, correct? The effect of your feet on your general health is a complex subject but for a child it could make movement more difficult and limit play and sports. If the defects are not corrected they could affect mobility throughout life.

I don’t know where you can go with this as a project. Perhaps some of the other experts may have more insight into studies like this. I would think that you could create a questionnaire to survey people who have or had foot abnormalities to find out how it affected their lives in general and their health specifically. If you happen to live near a university medical school, you might try talking to some pediatricians about how they deal with foot problems and what they consider the more serious consequences on other aspects of health.

Good luck with your project and please keep posting to this forum and we will try to help you make a good science project.

Sybee

Thanks Sybee.. Yeah I am talking about abnormal features due to genetics such as flat feet. I guess asking questions could work but I'll try my best to see if there is another way. I have heard that if you don't have hair on your feet at a certain age, that may be a sign of diabetes. These facts are what I want to prove in my experiment.

You're welcome!

Your study sounds intriguing. I never thought of feet as indicators of pathology but any part of the body could potentially be telling us something--if we can read the signs correctly.

Do some more reading on this and let us know what you come up with. Look for studies that provide statistically tested, controlled data. We'll be here to help you formulate a good project.

Good luck!

Sybee

Hi, Sybee
I found some research that may be quite useful to our cause, may you help me take a look. http://ministryhealth.org/HC/Home/Summe ... urfeet.nws
http://www.caring.com/articles/18-thing ... our-health

Hi,

I checked out both websites you sent and it was certainly interesting! Think I’ll start paying better attention to my feet from now on.

As to a science project that you can make out of this, I don’t know. Hopefully some of the other experts are following this thread and can post their ideas. You could make a questionnaire listing some of the signs of ill health that show up on the feet and have your friends fill it out and see if there’s a correlation between what they see in their feet and any health issues. You have to be careful, though. There are a lot of laws about personal health information and privacy that you have to be aware of when you work with people. Your teacher can help you with this if you decide to try it.

There was a link on one of your sites to the American Orthopaedic Foot & Ankle Society and they had a cool tool for checking your feet by looking at your footprint on paper: http://www.aofas.org/footcaremd/how-to/ ... print.aspx

Get a pail of water and a sheet of plain brown paper. Dip the right foot in the water and then step on the paper. Compare the footprint to those on the website and it will give some hints as to possible problems and how to correct them. You might be able to get some of your friends to try this. You could take photos of the prints and analyze them without linking the information to a specific person.

Good luck with your project!

Sybee

Hi Sybee,
I think i'll go with your advice and do a questionnaire. To be more specific, I'll probably see how the foot can give signs if we have high blood pressure. The way I'll test it is gather a group of about 20 people, 10 who have high blood pressure and 10 who don't and compare the features on their feet. First though I'll measure their blood pressure just to be sure. After seeing similarities amongst the feet of those who have high blood pressure, and seeing that those who have high blood pressure have different feet qualities compared to those who don't, I think i could draw the conclusion that certain foot features can indicate that one has high blood pressure. Sorry if it sounded confusing. Do you think this could work. Also, do you know how I can gather a bunch of people or how to run a project like this where it require being active and getting volunteers. Please reply soon. Thank you!

That sounds like an excellent question to ask and I'm really curious about what you will discover.

The problem as you say is how to get volunteers for your questionnaire. Health information is subject to some very stringent privacy regulations. You can use health data in a study if it is what they call 'de-identified' so that you do not know the person it came from. I would talk to your teacher about the best way to approach this. When i do a clinical study I have to write a long proposal and submit it to our university institutional review board. They check it to see if it follows the rules before it is approved.

Maybe you could ask your friends to volunteer for a foot 'exam' and relate your findings to a general health questionnaire. This would not presuppose any health condition like hypertension so may be permissible. Check with your school and read the Scibuddies guide to working with human subjects: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ects.shtml

i would have some fun and see whose feet are ticklish and whose are not. I have a hypothesis that people with ticklish feet are healthier than those with no response.

Good luck!

Sybee