Bare Soles At 90 Degrees

Comments from Super Moderators are expected, both for monitoring the discussion for trolling and personal attacks, and obviously providing their opinions.

 

Is she a Super Moderator? Particularly so, why post a negative attitude on this forum, where people who enjoy going barefoot....?

 

it's one thing to enjoy going barefoot, and another thing to intentionally damage your feet in hopes of reducing their sensitivity to dangerous conditions.

 

Negative attitude? Just because I draw the line in a different place from you?

I'm tired of the idea floating around that on this issue, everybody has to go to one extreme or the other.

 

"Too fanatical".... your words. Talk about extreme!

 

In summary, they are the soles of my feet. I don't care if they burn. I do care about limiting the extent they get blistered, and of course sufficiently heat tolerant soles reduce or eliminate that risk depending on durations of standing and distances walking on the specific type of hot surface. Asphalt is usually the hottest, but I have encountered sections with black bricks and those are extra hot!

Excessive standing on asphalt before walking on it during 90 degrees F hottest afternoon weather days is what contributes to overburning the soles, but also only with deliberate and prolonged standing soles fully on ground until the burning starts to tingle like the soles are getting electric shocked. However, soles that just burn prickly are normal for getting used to hotter heat. Redness and stinging is expected, after shorter stretches of burning hot and after extended burning hot by the end of the barefoot day. Obviously 100 degrees F weather during afternoon peak heat substantially reduces standing time because too much standing does not allow enough heat loss on the soles when walking a normal speed. Learning to effectively hot-foot allows walking across particularly hot stretches, even when after that it's necessary to find a cooler spot or shade to stop and put on flip flops even if just until the most urgent burning has reduced to only stinging.

 

My opinion. Posters in this section are not required to agree with you.

 

I happen to agree with your opinion in this instance. Some people act as though this place should be treated as a haven rather than a forum. Well, it's the latter, and debate and the lively exchange of viewpoints is its life blood. The minute it becomes a place where we all we do is sing minor variants from the same hymn-sheet, the stars will start disappearing from the sky.

 

If anybody is unclear on the difference between trolling and ordinary disagreement, they should PM a moderator.

Debates are how important points are made clear.

 

So yeah, one thing to be careful about is barefoot in higher heat and humidity, combined with friction. I can normally go 10 minutes on blacktop asphalt in 94 degrees F weather during the hottest afternoon hours in dry heat, but a lower air temperature and a higher humidity level can make things even worse. It doesn't even have to become very painful when the soles are burning in more humid weather, just burning enough to remain steadily prickly when it's more humid. Blisters can happen especially if any abrasion on rougher surfaces occurs while the soles are still at the point of being overburned.



Those are known to be most blister prone parts on my soles, but that was also after 5 minutes on blacktop and even about half a minute on sidewalk, one way, when taking the long way to get to the mailbox and check the mail. It's usually a 3 minutes round trip. Those blisters still do sting, though I can still walk on them on carpet without draining them yet. It's worth noting; however, that the blisters started turning into white spots about the 3 minutes mark to the mailbox and did not fully become blisters until after the walk was over. If this had been a shopping trip, I would have brought along flip flops. Since it was just checking the mail, I pushed my limits since I knew the barefooting would end when I got back home.

Soles being cleaned off, they barely show up except whiter wrinkle lines on the soles, but they feel a bit more stinging and bumpy when walking. They'll probably reattach sooner since my soles were already dry heat tolerant. I don't worry about these at all, these blisters are normal and expected for that blister prone part of the soles, as far as I care about my soles getting used to the extra heat for a longer duration. They just look worse than they are when the soles are dirty.



It is unrealistic to pretend they don't exist, because when walking on them and the sole gets slightly dirty again it shows the blisters as they fully formed before they will reattach.

 

After draining those blisters, the soles are fully walkable on both carpet and hard surfaces for short distances, although it still does feel like a small bump behind that location on the soles. Stepping is still a bit sore. Any "damage" is shallow when I push on them lightly with a thumb, but I'm not going to cut away that skin and weaken the healing. As long as I don't walk on them for a longer distance or push on them with a thumb any more than it took to drain them, then they are still starting to reattach already. They still do have a noticeable red ring around the white part of the blister, because it was a heat overburn. I won't care whether they peel away and leave a very shallow indentation that could take weeks to fully heal, or if they fully reattach and stay there as a tough soles look.

 

I wouldn't be baking asphalt into the soles of your feet if I were you, let alone even walking on it in bare feet. Asphalt is a petroleum product you know. And some of it's components are pretty nasty as well as being known carcinogens.

Science says cancers and illness are linked to asphalt and hot asphalt fumes:

https://sites.google.com/site/kundaparkneighbours/asphalt-plants-benzene-and-cancer

 

Hmm... not good. I wonder if it's the newer slurry seal coating that is extra dark and stays that way for months. Never heard about this before, and plenty of barefooters go through a heat-training routine when they have to deal with hot sidewalks, hot sand, hot street.

 

Rechecking the weather: it wasn't 92 degrees F before humidity, it was actually 97 degrees F before humidity heat index and during the hottest afternoon hours when I went out at 2:25pm.

That's why I got blistered, and faster than I expected. I should have rechecked the weather before going out, because even though the sun felt hot, the air temperature did not actually feel as hot with a light breeze. Still all of those are no larger than a US quarter, although two of them did start to combine. Checking the weather for early today, it's forecast for 93 degrees F with a heat index of 99 degrees F, I won't go out in the heat tomorrow for sure. Sure would like to know what the actual heat index was for yesterday with 97 degrees actual peak heat, but whatever once I heal I'll certainly be more than slightly more heat tolerant, that's for sure.

Well now, it seems that adding humidity, the weather reports show the heat index was between 100 degrees F and 102 degrees F.

 

Took a shorter walk today to the mailbox. Almost considered a longer one again but I didn't want to push past burning hot and get stuck at a point of no return. The dirt on the soles really brought out the blisters in appearance, but the heat actually helped them start to reattach more without causing them to fill up again.

I'll be wearing flip flops tomorrow when I go out, and up until the blisters fully reattach. No need to wear socks at home though. Still, no stinging, and in fact I can even mostly scrunch the soles before I get even close to soreness. Every one of them, including those that merged together into a larger one, are still no larger than from the tip of the thumb to the first knuckle of the thumb. Any blackened areas are not third degree burns and are just where the draining was done that also shows more when the soles are dirty.

Still don't want to push that far again just yet. Not just going out the door without preheating the soles. Not when the blacktop is already burning after tens of steps and gets prickly within a couple of minutes. Maybe when those parts of the soles are more heat conditioned for that much heat in humid weather later on. But, they will need to be eventually that much more heat conditioned since it isn't desert area heat.

 

After being drained, then a couple of walks on slightly less heat each day, and also wearing flip flops when entering places of business—the larger blisters I had did not grow any, but I had to trim them everywhere they did not reattach. Basically, that was almost the entire blister, especially if two merged into one.



Pinkish skin, instead of more tender red skin, shows that it was already starting to heal and therefore become more heat and rougness tolerant. I'll gradually build back up to more heat, but I'll go for full roughness even if I have to walk more slowly and delicately.

Definitely feels like there are shallow depth holes when walking, and the actual holes will probably at least a month (maybe two months?), to fill in so they are level with the rest of the sole.

Therefore, barefoot in 90 degrees or hotter weather is doable up to a person's individual heat tolerance limit, but it does mean the soles will burn, they can even blister, but then they'll toughen whether or not the get additional calluses. At least, that's as far as my own inland valley barefooting experiences go, I have no experience with desert area heat.

 

Fresh black pavement is loaded with chemicals that are not found in nature, and therefore don't belong in any part of your body. The sun eventually evaporates these liquids from the surface layer, which causes it to turn from black to gray. It's a lot more inert in that state. Still, it will never be as good as concrete.

I also try to always step over any liquid that appears to have leaked out of a car. Letting any of that soak into your skin can't possibly be a good thing.

 

Yeah, probably should be more concerned about whats been deposited on the asphalt than the asphalt itself. Diesel exhaust settles to the ground for instance, and all the crankcase oil that inevitably drips from beneath lots of vehicles. They don't recommend getting even new, clean motor oil on your skin, let alone oil that's been exposed to high heat, combustion chamber contaminants, unburnt fuel and what-not. There are Hundreds of known carcinogens in used crankcase oil.

 

I prefer to wait till early evening when the mercury is not that high to go barefoot. The pavement is much more forgiving than. Also, my soles tend to stay more moist. There's no reward for burning the soles of one's feet!!!

 

For me, it's not supposed to be forgiving.

If I don't want to wear shoes, the soles have to be conditioned for increasingly hotter heat on a consistent and almost daily frequency as the summer weather gets hotter, enough to more or less bake them stiffer and more leathery even if they don't necessarily thicken. Standing is entirely different than walking, but some extended standing should be possible just rolling on the soles when it's not practical to alternate lifting burning soles in the air.

Obviously there is a practical limit to however many minutes the soles can heat up before needing to cool them off, or just accepting that they will overburn; however, I'm not going barefoot on asphalt that overburns in seconds like I probably would initial deal with if I was in a desert area and had to get used to that even earlier during the day. Once overburned I can always go to shade, or to sidewalk if the shade is too hot. Overburning usually shows as developing white spots on the soles first, and not right to blisters.