Heat-moldable liners and foot health?

**Gaperious Basterd** · 02-23-2019, 01:29 PM

Human cells shouldn’t get above 105 degrees F, because enzymes involved in metabolism of sugar and cellular respiration stop working and cells lose ATP and have no energy to do anything and expire.

This is why hot tubs can’t be above 104 F.

So sticking your foot in a tight liner that is 220 degrees, or 170 degrees and keeping it there 10 minutes?

Can this kill cells in your feet? Or cause mild rhabdomyolysis?

I’m thinking circulation would mitigate heating of most perfused areas, but circulation can be impinged during molding of especially tight liners.

Isn’t some of the “burning” of a tight boot actually the muscles in your feet switching to anaerobic metabolism because they are starved of oxygen (colloquially known as lactic acid burn)?

Yeah yeah, I know all of us aren’t running around with foot necrosis and gangrene, but just hoping one of the boards physicians could comment on this.

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**DtEW** · 02-23-2019, 03:32 PM

I'm not a physician, but I would suppose this might be a problem if you're heat-molding a nipple-high boot liner. And/or a boot liner with the density and heat capacity of (tens if not hundred gallons of) water. And/or one that is having heat pumped into it. And/or everything soaked in thermo-conductive medium (as opposed to the insulator that all fabrics still containing air will always be). The combination of the four is more of the situation with the hot tub.

Otherwise your bloodflow is probably an okay liquid-cooling-heatsink system given the particular situation. I think if your fit is tight to the point where bloodflow is insufficient to redistribute that amount of local heat, you might have bigger problems (i.e. local oxygen starvation).

**nickinbc** · 02-23-2019, 06:34 PM

If you think heat molding an inner gets your foot hot you ought to try having boots foamed - a LOT more pressure and quite a bit hotter (the chemical reaction to generate the foam is exothermic).

I didn't notice any skin necrosis after having that done.