paleoFeet Show Social Norms can be Unhealthy

Today I ran barefoot in the park. It was weird doing something humans have done for over 200,000 years. It is against social norms. The only people barefoot are the lowliest homeless.

I was lost running on the coast in South Africa in 2013. A kid showed me the way back. He ran barefoot almost too fast for me to keep up. I was both amazed, and pitying him for not having shoes. But what he did is natural and healthy. What we are doing, encasing our feet in plastic, is unnatural and unhealthy.

Humans hunted by running animals to death. We are not quick runner or agile runner. But our posture and sweating capacity allowed us to run more time than our prey. In Born to Run McDouglas describes the tarahumara, a people who still run tens of miles daily.

Yet I challenge you to walk 1 kilometer barefoot in nature. It is difficult. Twigs, rocks, plants, even the earth can poke and hurt your sensitive feet. Our ancestors ran after quick deer with the same feet all over the globe, in snow, desert, forests, fields, rocks and sand. Yet now a lifetime of encasing feet in plastic and rubber makes them sensitive and weak.

Does it matter? For runners weak feet and legs lead to bad gait and knee and back damage. For everybody else there is grounding, the electrical exchange with the Earth. With bare feet it is…