There’s no easy way to break it – shoes are bad for your body. It’s not just high heels, cowboy boots and platforms, but most pumps, trainers and hiking boots too. According to research, they play havoc with your gait (the way you walk), which sends your whole posture out of balance. Prolonged use of the wrong shoes can lead to a host of musculoskeletal problems, including backache and osteoarthritis in the knee – ouch.
“It took four million years to develop our unique human foot…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.”
But there is one form of footwear that is not on the naughty list – flip flops (and sandals).
“It took four million years to develop our unique human foot…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.” These are the words of world-famous podiatrist and footwear consultant, Dr William Rossi, in a 1999 study.
Two years earlier, researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, compared African tribesmen with Europeans and concluded that, before the invention of shoes, people had healthier feet.
By 2009 the rest of the world had finally caught on, thanks mostly to American author and journalist, Christopher McDougall, whose book, Born To Run, set the pace for the rest of the industry. People went crazy for ‘barefoot’ running shoes after the book launch which saw manufacturers launching a range of shoes for this new market.
But they all seemed to miss the point. It was ‘shoes’ that were causing the problem in the first place. McDougall’s book focused on the members of the Tarahumara Indian tribe in the Mexican Copper Canyons, who could run long distances without the routine injuries of most runners – and these guys wore sandals, not shoes.
The most notable design to come out of the trend were Tarahumara Huaraches Sandals, or Invisible Shoes, launched by sprinter Steven Sashen, from Colorado. In a promotional video from 2012 he says: “Some research from Harvard [University] and some other studies have shown that running shoes could actually be the cause of injuries which they were sold to prevent.”
He adds that wearing the flat footwear (thin sandals with an ankle strap) for walking or running means we use our muscles, ligaments and tendons the way they were designed – as shock absorbers and springs – and walkers get more of a sensation of the ground underfoot. People who switched, he says, reported improvements in core balance, stronger feet and legs and no injuries. He would say that, he is a businessman after all.
“natural gait and shoes are bio-mechanically incompatible,”
But Dr Rossi is not selling sandals – he is a consultant to the footwear industry. His March 1999 report in Podiatry Management magazine: Why Shoes Make ‘Normal’ Gait Impossible led to a step-change in the way the world viewed footwear.
He says that “natural gait and shoes are bio-mechanically incompatible,” adding: “In some parts of the world, people consistently wear minimal footwear, either going barefoot or using flip-flops and sandals, and a very small percentage of this population suffers from foot problems.
“In the industrialised world, however, where narrow and rigid footwear is the norm, the occurrence of foot, ankle, and musculoskeletal problems is substantially higher. The reason is that the design of the human foot allows for optimal balance and stride, and shoes change the foot’s natural shape over time. As a result, natural gait and balance are compromised.”
It’s quite simple if you think about it. Most footwear lifts the heel above the ball of the foot, bending the toes upward and squeezing them together (even a one-inch heel increases the angle from the floor to 30 degrees).
“Over time,” he says, “this deforms the foot, leading to a host of foot problems, gait abnormalities and musculoskeletal pathologies.”
He adds that the extra weight of most shoes causes “energy drain, not only on the foot, but the whole body.” This is where we get the expression “dragging one’s feet”.
Flip flops and sandals keep the foot flat the way nature intended. Your toes are allowed to spread and the natural heel-to-ball-to-toe walking action is maintained. Sandals and flip flops are also much lighter. Need I go on? Okay, just a bit more.
I wouldn’t mess around with something as intricate and important as walking
Dr Rossi adds that gait involves half of the body’s 650 muscles and 200 bones, as well as joints and ligaments, and the soles and tips of the toes contain over 200,000 nerve endings, making it the “most complex motor function” of the body.
If I were you I wouldn’t mess around with something as intricate and important as walking. The best advice, then, is: ‘always listen to mother nature’.
* Dr Rossi inspired Dr Ray McClanahan to set up the Northwest Foot & Ankle clinic (NWFA), in Portland, Oregon, which has since posted a string of studies from global experts on this subject. Dr Rossi's findings are backed up by, among others, the American Journal of Orthopaedic Surgery, from 1905, the American College of Rheumatology, in a 2006 paper (Walking Barefoot Decreases Loading On The Lower Extremity Joints In Knee Osteoarthritis) and Australian physiotherapist, Michael Warburton, in his study of barefoot running, from 2001.