Healthy feet are worth a lot, anyone who is born with them is lucky. Shoes can ruin that. Damage to the whole body can result. But there is hope: walking barefoot. It's never too late for that.
Two researchers from Ireland and New Zealand have investigated how harmful walking in shoes can be. They evaluated studies on walking barefoot and walking with shoes. Your result:
Shoes impede complex foot functions
Although there are highly developed footwear to prevent exactly this damage, they also impair the functions in the foot. The feet are highly complex body parts made up of bones, ligaments, tendons and joints. Many nerves converge in the soles of the feet. As soon as the foot makes contact with the ground, the nerves transmit the information to the brain and spinal cord. The information is processed in the brain control center:
The brain processes the information and the body corrects posture and positions the joints to absorb impact forces and prevent damage. A shoe impairs these functions. This could give us the habit of bad running.
Shoes that compensate for physical deficits
If the shoes weaken the foot, this affects the whole body. Conversely, there are studies that show that certain running shoes can compensate for physical weaknesses. For example, the shoe can cushion a high body weight.
Ultimately, there is no general answer as to whether walking barefoot is better or not, says Uwe Kersting, Professor of Biomechanics and Orthopedics at the German Sport University. In any case, the foot passes on a lot of information to the body as soon as we switch to barefoot walking. But this effect wears off quickly, says Uwe Kersting.
It's better to switch to barefoot walking slowly
If you switch to barefoot walking slowly, the body has the chance to build up more muscle strength, while at the same time the skin becomes thicker and the subcutaneous fat deposits increase or are distributed differently. This in turn means that the entire connection between sensory input, movement and stress changes over the long term, explains the sports medicine specialist.
If you don't want to walk on the floor with bare soles, you can also wear barefoot shoes. The Institute for Biomechanics and Orthopedics of the German Sport University has examined how running in these shoes affects the feet and body.
In sports they are called minimal shoes or sports shoes without support or cushioning. The very flexible soles have a similar effect as barefoot shoes. The result of the study: The foot muscles, especially those of the toe flexors, are strengthened by up to 20 percent if the shoes are worn over a longer period of time.
The flexors of the toes are located at the bottom of the sole of the foot and carry a large part of the body weight. They play a major role in the push-off phase of walking. When they are better trained, the overall jumping power improves. The effect had less impact on the running mechanics.
Running barefoot as a self-experiment
Deutschlandfunk Nova reporter Caro Köhler is an avid athlete and has tried out for herself what it feels like to run a few kilometers without shoes.
Caro would have preferred barefoot shoes for the somewhat rougher surfaces, but she basically had a good feeling. She has found that she puts down her foot barefoot differently than in shoes. After her run she had sore muscles in the outside of her feet.
If you want to try barefoot walking yourself, you should note a few things: change slowly, otherwise you may overstress and injure yourself. For example, go for a barefoot walk first, take off your shoes after the run and run a few hundred meters barefoot, or just go barefoot at home and do balance exercises. For example, balancing on a rolled-up towel strengthens the arch of the foot.
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