OK, I want to share with the board what I've recently learned foot care.
I visited with a podiatrist, who's a runner. He became frustrated that his patients kept coming back year after year, after surgeries, after purchasing expensive foot gear designed to solve their problems.
Why was that?
Some 10 years later, he's found cultures who wear no shoes or open toe'd wide sandals suffer no foot problems, while cultures who wear shoes with narrow toe boxes and high tech arch supports suffer a myriad of ongoing foot problems that simply aren't correctable.
How could he change his patient's foot health? Here's what he came up with: Selecting shoes with a wide toe box, like Altra (which don't come in extra wide, btw and are too narrow for us) Vibram Five Fingers, and Croc's old style shoes that come in many different widths to fit all feet, along with a product called Correct TOES, which is a ($65.00) clear plastic insert for the toes, that helps to "realign toes to their natural position, and achieve optimal foot health." You can wear them easily with shoes that have a wide enough toe box. If you're going to keep wearing pointy toe shoes, then it's a waste of money, IMO.
Shoes should be flat, with no heel elevation, or toes pointing up. If our toes are in line, then our arches will be healthy, and need not other support is the thinking.
There's also a product called a Pedag T-Form, which is a soft metatarsal pad supposed to relieve splayfoot problems. The Small size seems to be good for size 8 womens, though the product says to use a Medium size.
At any rate, I'm hopeful that some board members will find some relief from this information. I don't plan to shove my feet, or those of my children, into narrow toed shoes ever again.
