By Six O'Clock My Ankles Had Vanished. Then a Retired Physiotherapist Showed Me a 15-Minute Routine I Do From My Armchair

What if the heaviness in your feet, the shoes that stop fitting by teatime, the socks that leave a deep groove in your skin, were not simply what happens after sixty? That is what I was told for four years. It took one afternoon I would rather forget to send me looking properly, and what I found was a physiotherapist who had grown tired of giving the same advice, and an odd looking device that gave me my evenings back.

I Thought It Was Just My Age. Then I Went Down Getting Off the Bus.

If you have ever peeled off a sock at bedtime and found a ring pressed into your ankle so deep you could run a fingernail along it, you know the feeling I mean.

If you have ever leaned on the trolley in the supermarket, not because you needed to, but because your feet were throbbing by the second aisle, you know it too.

For four years that was my ordinary week. It started in the summer, both ankles a little puffy by evening. Then it was every evening. Then it was by lunchtime. My feet felt like they belonged to somebody heavier than me. By six o'clock I could press a thumb into my ankle and watch the dent stay there.

My world got smaller without me noticing. I stopped walking into the village with my husband. I would start cooking and have to sit down halfway through. When the grandchildren came, I watched them from the chair by the window and told them Nan was having a rest.

Then came the fall.

I was getting off the bus on the high street. One step down, the way I had done a thousand times. My ankle was so swollen it simply would not bend, and my foot went out from under me on the pavement.

I was more shaken than hurt. What I remember is not the pain. It is my granddaughter crouching next to me while a stranger picked up my shopping, asking me, "Nan, why don't your feet work any more?"

I did not have an answer for her.

I Tried Everything, and Nothing Held

I did what you are supposed to do.

I wore the compression stockings. They cost a small fortune, they were a fight to get on every morning, and they lost their grip after a few weeks. I took the water tablets my GP prescribed, which sent me to the loo all day and left me feeling wrung out by teatime. I slept with my legs propped on two cushions. I bought the creams. I cut the salt.

Every single one of them worked a little, for a little while, and then the evening came round again and my ankles were gone.

By the end of that year I was quietly ashamed of it. I turned down a wedding because I knew I would not get a shoe on. I started looking at walking sticks online and closing the tab before my husband saw.

What changed things was a conversation over a fence. My neighbour's daughter is a physiotherapist, and when I told her what I had been trying she said something that stopped me. She said I had spent four years treating the water, and nobody had asked me why the water was not moving.

She put me on to a former colleague of hers, a physiotherapist now retired, who had spent most of his career telling people to elevate their legs and wear their stockings and had come to believe that advice was aimed at the wrong thing entirely.

His view was blunt. The fluid is not the problem. The problem is that the pump that should be shifting it has gone quiet.

The Odd Looking Device That Gave Me My Evenings Back in 15 Minutes

He explained it to me the way nobody had in four years, and it was embarrassingly simple.

Blood travels down to your feet easily, because gravity is helping it. Getting back up is the hard part. Your veins cannot do that on their own. They rely on the muscles in your calves and your feet squeezing around them with every step you take, which is why those muscles are sometimes called the second heart.

Sit still for most of the day, as most of us do past a certain age, and those muscles barely fire. The return slows down. Fluid settles at the lowest point it can reach, which is your feet and your ankles, and it sits there getting heavier as the day goes on.

That is why the stockings only squeeze, and why elevating only works while your legs are up, and why the tablets take water out of all of you rather than out of the place it has pooled.

What he had spent years arguing for was doing three things at once instead of one thing at a time. Warmth first, to open the vessels. Then movement, to wake the muscles that should be doing the pumping. And a firm wrap holding the foot and the ankle together while the other two do their work.

The device built around that idea is called Foot Companion.

I will be honest. After four years of things that nearly worked, I expected nothing at all.

That first evening I put my feet in, pressed the one button, and sat back with the television on. A warmth came up through the soles first, the sort that reaches further in than a hot water bottle does. Then the massage underneath, a steady buzz through the sole and the heel, firm without being sharp. And the wrap itself holding my foot snugly the whole time, the way a hand does.

Fifteen minutes later I switched it off and stood up to put it away.

I could see the bone on the inside of my ankle. I had not seen it since the spring.

The groove from my sock was gone. My slippers went on without me having to work my heel in. I did not say anything for a moment, and then I sat back down and had a bit of a cry about it, which my husband found alarming until I explained.

The First Month, Week by Week

• Week one. I slept through without shifting my legs about looking for a cool bit of the bed. That alone was worth it.
• Week two. The shoes I put on in the morning were still comfortable at night. I had forgotten that was normal.
• Week three. I walked to the shops and back without sitting down on the bench outside the chemist. My husband noticed before I did.
• Week four. I stood on the grass at my granddaughter's sports day for the whole afternoon, and I was the one taking the photographs instead of minding the coats.

It did not give me different feet. It gave me back the end of my day.

Why It Works: Three Things at Once

Foot Companion is built to support the circulation your feet are meant to have, rather than to hide what happens when they do not.

• Warmth you can set. Five heat levels, from a mild 40°C up to a deep 60°C, to help the vessels in your feet open up.
• Massage in three settings. A steady stimulation through the sole and the heel, meant to encourage the foot muscles to do the pumping work they do naturally when you walk.
• A firm, adjustable wrap. The strap draws the wrap snugly around the foot and the ankle, so the warmth and the massage stay where you put them instead of drifting off your heel.

It charges by USB, like a phone, and runs without a lead trailing across the room, so you are not tied to a plug socket. The strap fits most foot sizes. There is a button for power, one for the heat and one for the massage, and that is the whole of it.

No tablets. No prescription. Fifteen minutes in your own chair, with your feet in the thing and the kettle on.

Don't Just Take My Word for It

The Offer That Makes This an Easy Decision

If you ask me, getting to the end of the day with ankles you recognise, putting on the shoes you actually like, sleeping without shifting your legs about looking for a cool patch, that is worth a good deal more than it costs.

Why Stock Runs Short

Word gets round quickly with this sort of thing, and I have watched it happen since I started telling people.

Foot Companion is not turned out by the million. Each unit is put together and checked before it goes out, which keeps the quality where it needs to be and keeps the numbers lower than the demand. With the reader discount running, stock has been going faster than it comes in.

Do not spend another evening with your feet up on a cushion, cutting a walk short, or turning down something you would rather have gone to.

How to Order One

Here is the part worth knowing.

You will not find it in the chemist and you will not find it on Amazon. When it sold out there, copies flooded in and were sold under the same name, so it was pulled. It is available through the official website only.

1. Tap the button below.
2. Choose one unit at £49.99, or two at £89.98.
3. Enter your delivery address. Orders before 3pm go out the same day by Royal Mail.
4. Use it that evening. Fifteen minutes, sitting down.

Update: because each batch is checked before dispatch, the next restock date is not confirmed and may be several weeks out. If you would rather not wait, it is worth ordering while the reader discount is still on.