Walking and running barefoot has grown in popularity in recent years. Shoes do help insulate your joints from the shock of hard surfaces, but some people believe walking without shoes is better for your feet.
About.com’s walking blog points to a study that shows that modern day skeletons show more signs of stress than our human predecessors, but how much of that skeletal wear is caused by walking on hard modern surfaces (e.g. tile, concrete, etc) versus wearing shoes is uncertain.
There aren’t a lot of studies, but there are a few significant ones. One studied the feet of 180 modern skeletons and compared them to 2000 year-old skeletons of a barefoot society. The results were, “The pathological lesions found in the metatarsals of the three recent human groups generally appeared to be more severe than those found in the pre-pastoral group. This result may support the hypothesis that pathological variation in the metatarsus was affected by habitual behaviour including the wearing of footwear and exposure to modern substrates.” In other words, wearing shoes and walking on modern floors, streets and sidewalks is associated with more foot problems seen in skeletons.
I would be pretty hesitant to walk barefoot on many city streets, but there may be some quiet neighborhoods where there wouldn’t be much reason not to. I have done it on a neighborhood street before and I really enjoyed it, but felt that I constantly had to watch the ground to make sure I wouldn’t step on anything sharp. Does anyone out there have any strong opinions about this?
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