Relieve Joint Pain with Cork Flooring

You don’t have to suffer unstoppable pain to feel the difference cork flooring can make in your life. Simple discomforts like tired and achy feet, swollen ankles, knee stiffness or tension headaches can be remedied by moving away from traditional floors and installing cork. How to relieve joint pain and back pain with Cork?

Few people know that the body starts from the feet and moves its way up. The feet (and the flooring they walk on) begin the journey to joint discomfort. Traditional surfaces are often hard and unyielding – such as tile, linoleum, vinyl, hardwood and concrete. Even carpets, for all their thickness and padding, cannot remove the discomfort. A carpet is only as good as the under-pad; a cost many people choose not to increase when purchasing carpet.

How does flooring influence pain?

The natural stride (how we walk) is of the heel strike on the floor followed by the planting of the foot. The heel strike causes a shock wave (vibration) down into the floor. The wave is either absorbed (like in sand, soft dirt or thick pile carpet or cork) or it is sent back into the body as a secondary impact wave of vibration. The harder the flooring material, the bigger the returning shock wave (physics tells us that every action is met by an opposite and equal reaction). In this way the floor sends shock waves back into the body – causing vibrations. Vibrations follow anything hard or made of bone. The heel strike is the where joint pain begins.

The heel of the foot is boney which means it does not absorb vibration but sends it further up – to the knee. Here the joint is more pliable – better able to absorb movement. The knee is the second target of hard surfaces. Aching knees are a strong indication that all is not well with the feet nor the surfaces they walk on. But the pain does not stop there because the vibrations do not stop there.

The leg carries the vibrations (the knee can’t stop everything) into the hips and lower back. The hip-girdle is rigid – making it a poor controller of shock waves. The spinal column is next up. The vertebrae (back bones) are kept in alignment by muscles and tendons. These are excellent vibration reducers, but the bones in the column still carry a good portion of vibration upwards to the shoulders. The shoulder girdle is another boney set-up that is not meant to absorb energy from a shock wave. The neck, being a continuation of the spinal column, is well attached to the shoulders and easily upset. Even a small disturbance lower down in the system can cause neck pain. And neck pain is very difficult to control once it sets in. Of course the head is at the top of the list and the body. By the time the shock wave reaches the head it has either been fully dissipated (in a healthy individual with healthy, well-tuned muscles) or it has been allowed to flow all the way from the feet to the forehead.

What does cork flooring have to relieve joint pain?

Most of us can not choose the surface we work on – that is up to our employer, but many of us can choose the flooring we put into our homes. Cork is a different type of “solid surface”. Cork is made up of spongy cells that are full of air. Cork prevents the transfer of vibration – this is why it makes an excellent thermal and acoustic insulator. It absorbs vibrations. All types of vibrations are “eaten” or absorbed by cork. Noise is a vibration (in the form of sound waves) and “heat transfer” is done using vibration of one molecule hitting and accelerating the molecule next to it = thermal conduction. These are all vibrations that cork grabs and isolates/insulates.

In this way cork both absorbs the initial heel strike impact and it prevents the secondary set of vibrations from being felt through the body. This simple act of reducing the energy of a foot hitting the ground is what gives cork its “feel good” story. Cork flooring isn’t just a pretty product. It offers a wellspring of health for the body; cushioning it against daily impacts – from taking your first step in the morning to the last thing your foot touches in the evening. Order cork flooring to Relieve Joint Pain.