Barefoot basics: The incredible health benefits of walking without shoes
Modern footwear is killing your feet..
Sunday Standup:
Book Recommendation:
In this eye-opening book, psychologist Dr. Marc Schoen offers practical strategies to tame your overly reactive survival instinct and conquer fear, build resilience, boost decision-making, and improve every aspect of your life.
Get it here: Your Survival Instinct Is Killing You: Retrain Your Brain to Conquer Fear and Build Resilience
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When going barefoot makes sense..
The human body evolved walking and running barefoot through forests, climbing trees, and hunting for food. The body that we have today was created over the course of over 6 million years, since our ancestors started standing upright. In this context, we have been barefoot for almost the entirety of our existence.
But modern living includes spending days seated in (mostly) sedentary jobs, lounging in chairs, watching TV, and looking down at our cell phone screens for hours. Moreover we spend most of our waking days in cushioned shoes. And this adds up.
Your foot is designed to be dynamic and adaptable. Often, secondary to the shoes we wear and lack of movement, we lose these key functions. Years of wearing shoes have a massive effect on many of the smaller (intrinsic) muscles of your feet. Your shoes will debilitate and atrophy your feet.
Tight shoes will not just atrophy muscles locally, but also affect the biomechanics (and cause pain) up the chain (knee, hip, spine, etc - with studies showing effects all the way up to the neck). Ultimately your body is all connected via fascia; whatever is occurring at your feet is inevitably going to have an effect elsewhere. If you want to learn more about this, check out a previous article here.
The solution? Walking barefoot (or as close to it) as much as possible. Just by walking barefoot, you activate many of these smaller muscles that have been dormant secondary to cushioned footwear. The footwear we are wearing does offer us protection, and certainly does have a time and place, but comes at a cost: reduced activation, strength/stability, altered gait, and so much more. Traditional footwear have made our feet lazy and weak.
“Walking barefoot enables increased forefoot spreading under load and habitual barefoot walkers have anatomically wider feet. Spatial-temporal differences including, reduced step/stride length and increased cadence, are observed when barefoot. Habitual barefoot walkers exhibit lower peak plantar pressures and pressure impulses, whereas peak plantar pressures are increased in the habitually shod wearer walking barefoot. Footwear particularly affects the kinematics and kinetics of gait acutely and chronically.”1
Beyond that, your feet are deeply innervated; there are complex neural pathways associated with the entire surface of your foot. When they are covered all of the time - we are shutting off and numbing those neural connections. Our proprioception or awareness of the environment via our feet is reduced and shut off.
“… habitual footwear use has significant effects on foot-related outcomes in all age groups, such as a reduction in foot arch and hallux angles. The results indicate an impact of habitual footwear use on the development of the feet of children and adolescents. Therefore, growing up barefoot or shod may play an important role for childhood foot development, implying long-term consequences for motor learning and health later in life.”
This is especially true as we are developing and growing into our bodies. Footwear and subsequent loss of intrinsic control robs us of our movement variability and what essentially makes us human. Muscles grow tight or overactive, weak, and inhibited, and we subject areas of our bodies to overstress. Many blame these symptoms on “aging” but this couldn’t be further from the truth.
No "getting old" does not mean that you just get back pain (for example). It’s important to identify the factors that increase the likelihood of predisposing yourself to poor strategies and movement patterns. Your footwear is some of the lowest-hanging fruit.
What’s more? We aren’t entirely sure of all of the ramifications of footwear as we age. Little research on barefoot walking has been completed in adults approaching older age where foot problems and gait deficiencies are most prevalent.
Meaning the sooner you can implement these changes the better.
But should you jump into barefoot walking or running right away? The answer is often no. Transitioning footwear needs to be gradual, so that tissues have time to adapt to the new increased load they are encountering. Adaptation is key. You need to give your body time to adapt, and then reap the benefits.
The topic of minimalist shoes will be covered in future newsletters, with recommendations for brands, transition protocols, and tips for success.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26220400/
A healthy reminder! Looking forward to your brand recommendations. I’ve tried multiple styles of Vivos and all have been too narrow! I’m thinking about trying the primal line at Soft Star Shoes next.