Why Barefoot Shoes Aren't For You

The idea is sexy, but the application is faulty.
Our feet developed on uneven, natural terrain. Almost none of the terrain we navigate on a daily basis fits that bill. So simply walking barefoot on unnatural, flat, man-made ground can sometimes be even worse for your feet & body than walking in shoes. Key word: sometimes. It depends on the person, on their neurology, on their foot type, on their chosen/given movement strategies.
Barefoot shoes aren't for everyone. Each person's foot type and posture can differ dramatically from the next person's, and some feet may have adapted vastly different compensatory/dysfunctional patterns over a lifetime relative to someone else's feet. The foot compensates to give the brain what it needs: a sense of the ground a lever for forward locomotion.
And sometimes, they fail to do those things well. In those cases, we need shoes to restore that ground sense, to allow the foot to do what it's meant to do in a pattern that the brain can recognize. That's the only way the brain can "unlock" your ankles/hips/knees/low back/rib cage/neck.
Strengthening your feet isn't always the answer. And we know, because we've tested hundreds of individuals in different pairs of shoes to see the immediate effect restoring a "ground" sense for folks can do, not only to their pain, but to the objective tests we do on the table.
Restoring ground sense in our patients have helped immediately improve symptoms of low back pain, neck pain and headaches, dizziness, knee pain... the list goes on. Our sense of the ground is more important than you may know it to be.
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