“Where are your shoes?”
I get this question fairly often nowadays. I get this question not because I’m some forgetful loon who leaves his shoes at home — on the contrary I’m a mindful loon who chooses to not wear shoes. I choose to go barefoot for the same reasons I avoid sugary drinks, don’t do drugs and try to sleep often — it’s a healthier lifestyle.
I went shoeless just over three months ago. I was met with scoffs, laughs and minimal encouragement. Most encouragement came from my mom and dad, who are known in my circles for radical ideas such as home birth, home education and homeopathic remedies, so that didn’t surprise anyone. The laughs and scoffs came from everyone, including them. Church folks laughed and asked how long this would last. School friends gave me looks and people at The State Press asked questions.
Before I go into this, I want to make something clear — I am not telling you to go barefoot. Unlike my other columns, I’m not trying to convince you to join me in my hippy lifestyle. I think this is by far a better and healthier way to live, but I don’t feel a need to make you believe it. Enjoy your freedom (or lack thereof) in shoes. I didn’t plan to write this column originally, but I finally felt compelled to give some explanation. Consider me similar to LeBron James in this Sprite commercial.
Lebron James won't tell you to drink Sprite and I won't tell you to go barefoot.
Dr. Kevin W. Ross, a chiropractor entering his 25th year of practice, encourages all people to go barefoot.
“There’s actually a tremendous amount of benefits (to going barefoot),” Ross said.
Ross explained one of the biggest benefits, grounding. Grounding (also referred to as earthing) is the practice of having your skin on dirt, grass or “earth.” Ross explained how every electrical system needs to be grounded, in your house all of your electrical goes to a panel box and that panel box has a grounding wire that is directly in the earth. Ross said the grounding concept applies to people as well.
“We are a biochemical-electrical system that needs to be grounded,” Ross said. “We walk around insulated all day with our shoes, we have a rubber sole that protects us from that good healthy grounding.”
Grounding research has some opposition, the main study in support is accused of having a small sample size, but the study is nonetheless scientific. Ross said going to the beach is a commonly loved form of grounding, even if most people don’t recognize it.
“(Grounding) is why people that go to the beach feel so good,” Ross said. “They have their bodies, their butts on the sand, they are in saltwater — that’s also a conductor.”
Remember how good it felt to play in the mud as a kid? To run barefoot in the grass? That’s your body responding to the things that benefit it. Ross said most barefoot people will be more relaxed, more focused and have more energy in their everyday life. Personally, I have never felt so centered like I do now when I’m barefoot.
Going barefoot is beneficial for your health outside of grounding as well. Many foot doctors would recommend you go shoeless as much as possible; Ross joins them, citing the way shoes restrict your joints.
“Most shoes are restrictive to the normal motion (of walking),” Ross said. “We have a tremendous amount of bones, we have more articulations in our feet and our hands than we have anywhere else in our body. They’re very intricate joints that need to have a freedom of motion and most shoes that people wear restrict that freedom of motion.”
You come home after a long day of work/school and you take off your shoes, your feet feel free and they breathe easily. You know as well as I do that it feels good.
Foot prisons? I don't think so.
Personally, the benefits of going barefoot are overwhelming. Going shoeless has eliminated my stinky feet, my ingrown toenail issues and largely solved my plantar fasciitis. One splinter is literally the only negative I have had in the last three months.
The next question I get, after I explain my purposefully bare feet, is if my feet get dirtier than when I wore shoes. Yes. No doubt. I can’t even believe this is a question. My feet have far more dirt on them than when I wore socks and shoes, but that isn’t a bad thing by any means.
“In society for the last few thousand years, since God created us and put us on earth, the only reason people have had shoes was to protect their feet from injury,” Ross said. “The idea of dirty feet has never been a concern.”
In Arizona, shoes should be worn to protect your feet from being burnt on hot concrete. Come this summer, I plan to find the least restrictive shoes possible and only wear them where foot burning is a risk.
Shoes themselves can be less clean than going barefoot, in terms of bacteria.
“You can have fungus, foot fungus, toe fungus, any of those types of things can develop from a moist hot environment that’s perpetuated in closed shoes in particular,” Ross said.
Shoes should be like gloves. You don’t wear gloves everyday or everywhere, you wear them to protect your hands from sharp, hot, heavy or potentially dangerous activities.
I’m not telling you to go barefoot, but can you tell me why you won’t?
Reach the columnist at maatenci@asu.edu or follow @mitchellatencio on Twitter.
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Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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