Are shoes bad for us?

[Catayst]

An interesting article about how our gait has been affected tremendously (for the worse) from walking with shoes:
http://anthropik.com/2007/06/learning-to-walk/

I'm curious if any of you pod students have done research or heard about "fox-walking" and the differences in native walking versus modern walking with shoes.

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[Feli]

Man, I wish people would walk around everywhere without shoes lol... Yes, nail and derm problems may lessen, but if you think we see foot lacerations, trauma, infections now, just wait.

There's no doubt that shoes support the foot and take some work off the muscles, but keep in mind that the main function of covering the feet: protection. It's probably a good idea to walk around barefoot at home to stretch and strengthen the muscles, improve balance, and air out the skin/nails. However, it's just not practical to walk around everywhere with no shoes or shoes that lack support.

As for shoes being what ruined the structure of human feet, I don't think that's accurate at all. Calcaneus density would indicate that people were probably walking with heel-to-toe ("cow," according to the author) gait long before modern shoes were around. The ball-to-heel ("fox") steps might protect somewhat, but they are much slower and less efficient. Wearing shoes doesn't have to mean bad feet, but wearing ill-fitting shoes or wearing shoes all the time probably will have those effects.

It's a decent read, but it's just a lot of speculation and anecdotal evidence.
Also, let's consider the practicality... and the source :
http://anthropik.com/author/jason (<- basically says "computer nerd with no anat/phys training")

 

[MossPoh]

I think shoes have screwed up running technique more than anything. There is research done..no idea where it is nor will I look it up that discusses it. The actually recommend you buy cheaper LESS cushioned running shoes that fit well. Evidently some of those running shoes are so cushy you can never tell you are using wrong technique. Result is not so much foot problems as knee pain, lower back pain, etc. I personally hate shoes...I was quasi-farm/beach kid type...so the only reason I wore shoes was working out or I have to. (Lab) I even keep a pair of flipflops in my car in case I have to go into stores.... I have to say other than hideous looking nails, I have never had a problem...Of course my feet kind of developed to be thicker than most shoes it seems....used to walk barefoot on gravel no problem.

 

[MrFeeties]

There's a lot of crazy people who run distance barefoot. I guess they jsut wrap duct tape around the pads of their feet or something. My favorite BAMF example is Barefoot Rick -> http://www.barefootrunner.org/

 

[dpmrunner]

I didn't read the article so I can't quite comment on that and right now I am too lazy to look up some of the articles to support some of my statements and opinions....

Shoes are interesting and with a baby, it provides a stabile platform for which they can use to walk earlier than normal. If you notice though, many children are kept in shoes which can weaken certain muscles. So far, many studies can't show exactly if there are more or less of certain problems in cultures that rely on shoes compared to ones that don't, although I believe ideally the human body is a wonderful thing that adapted to walking on a foot and although there are problems, there are more because of shoes changing things...

On to what I know more about. As for running, lately methods such as POSE have become quite popular (past few years now) in which people tend to land more on their forefoot and push off instead of the classic crashing down on the rear of the foot. They also lean forward slightly and try to use 'gravity' to their advantage, these people usually use a racing flat or minimalistic shoe, many retro shoes such as the limber up moscow or the puma harambee h streets (based off a track spike) are popular. The other theory that goes along with this is that the shortening of the achilles causes pronation and other running injuries and inefficiencies in running gait. People will slowly transition to shoes with less and less of a heel to toe drop, and many people have successfully done this including those that were severe overpronators that were pushed into heavy motion control shoes.

A lot of times, people refer to shoes in the 70's and 80's during the first running boom and how they had less injuries then and the heel to toe ration was closer to 1. People can counter this by speaking of the new running boom going on now and state that there are typically more injuries because people don't go about training smartly and people are now heavier too and as you know, running is a very high impact sport. Either way, there haven't been too many studies to solidify any of this and it is hard to obtain quality controls and accurate measurements.

It is interesting though, most runners with the best measured running economy are africans, whom also lead the world in distance running (kenyans and ethiopians) These people are quite active young and typically don't have shoes and if one examines their stride, s/he could see that they are usually natural forefoot strikers and if not then they land much more gently on their heel and pick their foot up more as compared to most american runners that crash on their heel and push off, so many elites have a method that is somewhat like POSE in some regards but still a typical running stride.

some of this rambling might not make sense as I didn't re-read any of it but I can always clarify later too if anyone even cares