14 Aug Minimal shoes (Yoga in Heston & Hounslow)
Sefali and I started wearing the Vibram “Five Fingers” shoes a few years ago after an American friend recommended them. We found them great for allowing us to walk around practically barefoot everywhere. Minimal shoes can really help if you are looking to recover your natural strength and mobility in your feet. Yes you get some strange looks but they are also great conversation starters!
This post concludes our series on mismatch diseases of the feet drawn from extracts of Daniel E. Lieberman’s brilliant book “The Story of the Human Body”. If you have time I highly recommend reading it. If you have issues with your feet hopefully this will help you understand why.
“..many people suffer from foot problems because our feet evolved to be bare. Minimal shoes have been around for many thousands of years, yet some modern shoes designed for a combination of comfort and style can interfere substantially with the foot’s natural functions.
We don’t need to abandon shoes entirely, and a growing number of shod consumers are responding to these mismatches by wearing minimal shoes that lack heels, stiff soles, arch supports, and narrow toe boxes.
It will be interesting to see if they fare any better, and we urgently need to understand how to adapt people with weak feet to the greater muscular demands of wearing minimal shoes. I also suspect it is healthy to encourage infants and children to go barefoot and to ensure that children’s shoes are minimal so their feet develop properly and become strong.
Sadly, however, most people today with unhappy feet respond by treating the symptoms of their foot pain with orthotics, ever more comfortable shoes, surgery, medications, and a host of other products available in your local pharmacy’s extensive foot care section.
As long as we continue to encase our feet in comfortable, apparently normal shoes, podiatrists and others who care for aching modern feet will continue to be very busy.”
I hope these series of posts on mismatch diseases that effect our feet have given you an insight into how most of the issues we have with our feet develop and how they can impact the whole body.
Hopefully you feel encouraged to spend more time barefoot and to look into minimal shoes as a way of keeping your feet strong and healthy!
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