So it has been two months since I started barefoot /minimal shoe wearing exclusively. I love my vibram five fingers. All the pain I was in for the last ten years from supposed fibromyalgia, planta faciitis, meltons neuroma, shin splints, and flat feet is gone. The hip pain that keeps me from walking or standing for long, is almost gone. I've started using a wobble board to balance my hips and strengthen my weak, flat feet. I'm using a balance ball, medicine ball, and foam roller for stripping scar tissue from my illiotibial bands. My chiropractor did a foot scan last week and said I need orthotics to help take away the hip pain. However, I told him I'm still pretty burned out on shoes and plan on never wearing normal shoes ever again for as long as I live. I'm only 36. I threw out all my shoes that weren't minimal and my progress from constant pain + headaches and not being able to sleep to current is amazing. SHOES ARE BAD. So I told him, if I don't own shoes, how am I supposed to wear orthos? And since this is working, why not give it another few months? My rehab team agreed, that if it works, don't fix it. Barefoot in the desert.
well i was born with feet severely crippled, luckily straightened by surgery when i was younger than 1 , then i had problems with flat feet, and orthopedics suggested my parents to let me walk barefoot, thing that was never allowed to me. later, very soon, i had early blood circulation issues in my feet, then inflaming achilles tendons doing sports, which btw never made my calves grow, and bone pain in my left foot, finally discal hernia. also, my feet perspiration didnt mix well with shoes, giving me cuts between toes. one day i started going barefoot. then i continued so on. my feet went severely swollen for a couple of summers but eventually coped with the new environment and this was the end of dead cold feet in winter and inflammations. i also built up new muscle on my calves simply by walking. oh, yes, now i have heel cracks and thorns to deal with. i guess pain is a part of life. :sultan:
I agree. Minimalist shoes aren't really going barefoot, but could be a tool to transition to that. Also, someone here on this forum had mentioned that those Vibram Five Fingers can get very stinky after extensive wear. Ewww... :ack2:
Why does it have to be "really barefoot"? There's unhealthy or uncomfortable shoes. Fine, don't wear them. But we wear shoes for a reason, and it IS natural, we naturally evolved to wear them. If you're in a cold place, you SHOULD invest in comfortable, properly fitting, well made boots. If you do things like cycle, you DO need cycling shoes. If you work in contruction, mechanics, metalwork, or lots of other things, either for money or fun, you NEED boots. If you climb rocks, you really need climbing shoes, maybe some with large calluses could do light climbing without shoes, but it sounds like a recipe for ripped off nails, broken toes or other bones, etc, and wouldn't let you properly use some techniques without injury. Going barefoot sometimes is great, I do it all the time. And I also have a collection of shoes to fit my various needs (all those mentioned above, and more). To decide shoes are "bad" is to admit you've never owned a quality pair of shoes sized properly to your feet, with the right socks. Pants are not "bad", either, but if you choose the wrong ones, they can be. We're a loooong way past making the decision that we'd rather wear things and build things and use things than sit in trees. At least 200k years past that, 3 million or more depending on what evidence you take into account. From sandals to steeltoes, they all have their uses. They're not "bad" or something to be sworn off, they just shouldn't be misused. Never wearing shoes is, for most people, just as bad a choice as always wearing shoes, IMO.
I can climb to the top of giant rocks without slipping like everyone I climb them with that does wear shoes. I go urban exploring and my friends that wear shoes are the ones that get nails stabbed through their feet because they can't feel what they are walking on before it's too late and I walk away fine. I can walk on hot tar pavement and ride a bike AND a skateboard and land tricks on it. I can walk on fucking glass and not get cut. My body doesn't have the same pussy limitations that yours does. Sorry. Evolving implies an adaptation to your body. Shoes aren't natural. Fuck you. You're wrong.
I've been transitioning to barefooting for a week or so, too cold for much right now. But I have tendonitis, and no shoes with ankle space like the doctor says I need to get better. My feet are shaped a little strangely, and if the shoe falls below the ankle I can't keep it on well. The knees are feeling better now, but the ankle muscles had atrophied from lack of use and... yeah, that hurt. I even did the weights machines barefoot yesterday. That felt weird to do.
Hi Roorshack, I guess i should help widen your horizon ;-) > If you do things like cycle, you DO need cycling shoes. Nonsense. In summer I usually do wear flipflops (if at all) and for reasons of safety I put them off for biking and in my rear basket. Cycling barefoot is really not a problem, as long as you have ‘tame’ pedals on your bike. > If you work in contruction, mechanics, metalwork, or lots of other things, either for money or fun, you NEED boots. This is the narrow western view of reality. I’m shure all over the world more housings have been built barefoot than shoed. And did you ever have some of these metal haushold / decoration things from India or so? Recently I saw a TV report about the production by artisans of a cooperative. They work on the object, hammer or solder it sitting on the ground while fixing it with their bare feet. > If you climb rocks, you really need climbing shoes, Did you know, freeclimbing was invited since 1890 in the Elbe Sandststone Mountains (Saxonia) and was practiced barefoot over a whole long time. Freeclimbing shoes did come up when the industry discovered this sport as another income opportunity ;-) I don’t hate shoes, but your examples just invited me.
No, we didn't. "It took 4 million years of evolution to perfect the human foot. But we’re wrecking it with every step we take." (...) "Shoes are bad. I don’t just mean stiletto heels, or cowboy boots, or tottering espadrilles, or any of the other fairly obvious foot-torture devices into which we wincingly jam our feet. I mean all shoes. Shoes hurt your feet. They change how you walk. In fact, your feet—your poor, tender, abused, ignored, maligned, misunderstood feet—are getting trounced in a war that’s been raging for roughly a thousand years: the battle of shoes versus feet. Last year, researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, published a study titled “Shod Versus Unshod: The Emergence of Forefoot Pathology in Modern Humans?” in the podiatry journal The Foot. The study examined 180 modern humans from three different population groups (Sotho, Zulu, and European), comparing their feet to one another’s, as well as to the feet of 2,000-year-old skeletons. The researchers concluded that, prior to the invention of shoes, people had healthier feet. Among the modern subjects, the Zulu population, which often goes barefoot, had the healthiest feet while the Europeans—i.e., the habitual shoe-wearers—had the unhealthiest." (...) "“Natural gait is biomechanically impossible for any shoe-wearing person,” wrote Dr. William A. Rossi in a 1999 article in Podiatry Management. “It took 4 million years to develop our unique human foot and our consequent distinctive form of gait, a remarkable feat of bioengineering. Yet, in only a few thousand years, and with one carelessly designed instrument, our shoes, we have warped the pure anatomical form of human gait, obstructing its engineering efficiency, afflicting it with strains and stresses and denying it its natural grace of form and ease of movement head to foot.” In other words: Feet good. Shoes bad." Source: http://nymag.com/health/features/46213/ Wiggling bare toes, ~*Ganesha*~
I went barefoot for the first time this year yesterday. It's finally warm enough. I was wearing these terrible shoes from Walmart all winter. A few weeks ago I walked a few miles in them and I fucked up a toe on my left foot. The toe that gets roast beef. I must have bruised a tendon or something. The pad undernear my toes hurt like hell and I could barely walk on it for two days, then the toe got a little swollen. It still hurts when I bend it. My big toe on the same foot was screwed up for awhile too. That foot seems to take the brunt of my weight and walking because that leg's a bit shorter and my left foot is slightly turned in. Anyways, I'll burn those shoes if I ever get the chance. My feet are still pretty calloused from last year.
Being capable of enabling ourselves with devices for improved mobility, range of climate, protection, and more, is what makes humans special. That is, we're tool users. And shoes are great tools. One does not need to wear shoes all the time, it's just great if you don't. But if you swear off all shoes based on some idea that they're inherently "bad", you're going to miss out on a lot of what life has to offer. Full on barefooters are like full blown anarchists: they see what too much of something does, and swear it off altogether, instead of thinking about it logically and understanding that there's a happy middle ground. Wearing shoes all the time is bad. And not wearing any shoes has the potential to be just as bad. We evolved for 4 million years to be monkeys, and in the last several hundred thousand, took a sharp turn towards what we now are. And that turn involved clothing, including footwear, to allow us to extend our range out of our natural habitat, and as such, to allow populations to grow large enough for more substantial progress. If you'd rather spend your whole life without seeing any dwelling but the tree you where born in, much less seeing any fire, or speaking beyond a few grunts, then take off your shoes. THAT is the romantic barefoot dream. Yes, you can be primitive and get on airplanes, walk through cities, and whatever else, but you are walking through that which was built by workmen wearing shoes, in a climate that people moved to because their shoes allowed them to. I sympathize with barefooters as I do with anarchists, in that I see WHY they do what they do, but both of them and their shortsightedness have the capacity to greatly annoy me. Suck it.:2thumbsup:
I agree that we have indeed evolved into tool users, beginning with the first flint hand axe and developing into tools like the one both of us are currently using to communicate on this web platform. I disagree, however, where the greatness of shoes is concerned. In the beginning, shoes were rather crude things, lacking any sophistication. "The earliest designs were simple affairs, often mere "foot bags" of leather to protect the feet from rocks, debris, and cold." I know that there are situations - as the aforementioned need to protect my feet from the cold - calling for the use of shoes. My preference of walking barefoot is based on wellness and health reasons - and considering ailments of several joints like ankles, knees and hips or back pain, walking barefoot is a means of relief. Podiatrists believe that such ailments can only be met with orthotics and special shoes - which of course helps in raising their income. Furthermore, wearing shoes blocks me from a great deal of being in touch (literally) with my surroundings. Therefore, I miss out on a lot of what life has to offer when wearing them. See above - as I wrote, I do acknowledge the fact, that some situations call for wearing shoes. However, based on my personal wellness, I do not feel happy at all when wearing them. There's a middle ground, but it's not a happy one - it's rather choosing the lesser evil: shoes or frostbite. "The earliest known shoes are sandals dating from about 8000 to 7000 BC and found in Oregon, USA in 1938. The world's oldest leather shoe, made from a single piece of cowhide laced with a leather cord along seams at the front and back, was found in a cave in Armenia in 2008 and is believed to date to 3,500 BC. Ötzi the Iceman's shoes, dating to 3,300 BC, featured brown bearskin bases, deerskin side panels, and a bark-string net, which pulled tight around the foot. However, tanned leather, the material most commonly used for making shoes, does not normally last for thousands of years, so shoes were probably in use long before this. Physical anthropologist Erik Trinkaus believes he has found evidence that the use of shoes began in the period between about 40,000 and 26,000 years ago, based on the fact that the thickness of the bones of the toes (other than the big toe) decreased during this period, on the premise that wearing shoes resulted in less bone growth, resulting in shorter, thinner toes." - So, shoes have not been around for several hundred thousand years... (quotes about shoes from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe ) I am spending my current life due to the coincidence of having been ladled out of the gene pool and poured out into the place of being a member of this modern western society. I am one of those people living by rules and schedules, having to meet deadlines and objectives set up by people defining life as a human being's ability to function rather than live. Just like many other people, I have a regular and normal job, being part of a machine-like existence. Searching for different thoughts and wisdom about life and what is essential about it, I have read the experiences of people who have encountered human beings living unscathed by our modern ways of existence, definitely having a language, a social structure and living their life instead of having their lives live them, as it does us. Robert Wolff ("Original Wisdom") and Sabine Kuegler ("Jungle Child") are two sources of that. The lives of the people they were with - the Sng'oi in Malaysia and the Fayu in West-Papua - have their appeals, since they lack the mechanics of greed and the dog-eat-dog society we live in and entail a sense of belonging, compassion and emotional commitment among each other, we could profit from to live a happier life. And yes, those people are barefoot, too (or in case of the Sng'oi were barefoot, since they have become assimilated into the Malay modern society and became extinct... thanks to "evolution"). Being barefoot outdoors in nature makes me feel closer to the bare necessities (no Disney pun!) of living and decelerating from being part of the machine existence. It's not just a romantic dream or glorifying the noble savage image. IMO, there are are far stronger things and other people in the world that have a greater potential and more reasons to be annoyed about... barefooters or anarchists defending their ideals are among the lesser "annoying" people. Besides, people annoying others can often become role models (not that I'm aspiring to be one). Wiggling bare toes, ~*Ganesha*~
Im a bare footer and a boot wearer I walk the two realms - whats the problem? I never seen so much fuss over footwear, the world is falling to bits and your arguing over shoes!!! Aye aye aye...
To avoid cutting out a mountain of text to quote: I did not say that shoes are 200 thounsand years old, I said that's about when modern humans emerged, and that this change brought the capacity to MENTALLY evolve, so that we could come up with things like shoes. A shoe is a big piece of tech, if your most advanced tool is a stick. Also, the timeline you gave makes 200 thousand years, or OLDER, seem totally reasonable for the first people covering their feet to do things they otherwise couldn't. Shes are an evolutionary adaptation. It's just that society in the last few hundred years has gone nuts. Even 50 years ago, in a lot of the developed world, barefoot people where commonplace. No more.
As a newcomer to this arena, I agree with your point society has gone nuts. I was blessed to spend the first thirty years of my life mostly barefoot. Moving to a colder climate altered those options. I still go barefoot as often as possible and use my five fingered shoes when the weather shifts. I resent the cultural "evolution" of society with its power trip proclaiming shoes are proper. Like most barefoot fanatics, I feel pity for the ills frequent "socially correct" folks complain about incessantly, but respect that it is their choice to choose social mores over self well being.
one example, valid for Italy : they sell us pasteurized or ultra high temperature (UHT) sterile milk, everywhere. they kill almost all the bacteria in milk, specially in UHT milk, then they sell you little, commercial brand, pricey yoghurt bottles containing the same bacteria (they call them ferments 'cos labeling them as bacteria would scare buyers away) that they killed in milk in the first place obtaining the result of doubling the profit. this is potentially dangerous since in a sterile (or almost sterile) environment bad bacteria spread faster than in substrates already colonized with good harmless or even useful autochthonous bacteria, because the bad ones face no competition. also, heat treatment greatly degrades or even wipes away vitamins. same thing with shoes, 'they' kind of impose them and then try to sell new expensive ones that are just an attempt to solve the inherent woes of shoes themselves. that's why i buy and drink raw (but strictly controlled) whole milk using the same six glass bottles over and over instead of buying it in disposable plastic bottles... and go barefoot buying it :2thumbsup: think it makes perfect sense but people keep telling me that barefooting and raw milk will make me ill. i think 'they' are totally misguided, deceived and terminally nuts and 'they' think the same of me. p.s. the food lobby here passed a law forcing raw milk dealers to warn us that we MUST boil raw milk before consuming it. small dealers are forced to place signs stating that the consumer is "forced by law" (which btw is false) to boil it. now this is screaming idiocy, cause boiled milk is even WORSE than UHT milk. but those selling raw milk are subject to obsessive health controls making it safer than industrial milk. i asked the other customers and the majority drinks it raw. so far i never heard of a single case of illness resulting from consumption of raw filtered whole milk sold on tap. oh another thing. raw milk is way cheaper, too.
man, i wear boots too each now and then if i think it is a safe idea doing so. sometimes even a helmet or a bullet proof vest can be handy, i can cope with this and think most of us can. i'd never puddle barefoot in chemicals, or make a very long motorcycle ride barefoot over unknown roads. the hip forums, like a vast part of the internet, are notoriously stuffed tight with inane debates, dude. that makes absolutely no news. that's the way we like it. what is truly inexplicable is why you are posting here, if you don't like the topic. just move to the next forum, bro , it's this simple.
