From Head to Toe ... Or How I Cured Myself

When I was a small child in the US I don’t remember ever wearing sandals. It was either shoes, sneakers or flip flops. Then we moved to Israel, and ‘biblical sandals’ were de-rigueur. I remember my first pair, I thought the ones with a big toe thong were cool, and so I chose them and then suffered horribly for several days with blisters between my big and second toes. Then I moved to the classic Israeli ones, with a wide strap in front, a thinner one in back and round the ankle, and absolutely no padding. The shiny leather top sole was as hard to break in as a sears-roebuck saddle. As you walked around the first couple days, your sweat would pool on the surface and you would slip around and rub blisters on the contact points with the rivets on the back of the buckles.

All that wasn’t so bad. The bad part was that after a few years of walking everywhere in them during the blazing hot Israeli summer, suddenly, just when I was getting used to them, I got this awful feeling as if my toes had grown cantilevers into my foot, and when I stepped forward and bent my toes up it felt like the cantilevers were trying to break out of the bottom of my foot.

My doctor told me I needed ‘support’. Shoes were just too hot for most of the year in the Tel-Aviv area, so I tried out the new ‘magon’ sandals, that at the time were still being sold only in ‘orthopedic’ shoe shops. That helped for a few more years.

Then I went to the army, where the heavy leather boot was terribly narrow just in front of the toes. When I was kneeling down with my toes flexed one day, I gave the final zetz to my poor incipient inflamed nerve. So I continued limping around for a few more years, eventually finding myself confined to wearing nothing but New Balance sneakers with custom orthotics.

I won’t even mention the nightmare encounter with the podiatrist, who when I came to consult about what I could do about my neroma (inflamed nerve between metatarsals), first tried to prescribe systemic steroids, and then when that made me dizzy and sick, gave me a shot of steroids straight in the inflamed nerve. That was one of the most painful things I have ever had done to me.

One fateful day, I read about vivobarefoot shoes in Kevin Kelly’s “Cool Tools”. Their guiding principle was that our feet were designed to be bare. I mean, people walked around barefoot for hundreds of thousands of years before anyone invented shoes. Saying we need ‘support’ is sort of like claiming that our hands can’t function without a glove and brace. And just imagine what would happen to your hands if you always wore protective gloves and a supportive brace round your wrist: your hand would wither and your muscles would atrophy. That is exactly what we do to our feet: by supporting them continually with protective ‘shoe’ braces, we cause them to atrophy and degenerate into needing ever more support and protection.

So I couldn’t buy these shoes in Israel, but I started very gradually easing myself into walking barefoot inside. Five minutes a day, Ten minutes a day, gradually gradually until I could spend hours barefoot. I would get occasional twinges from my neroma, but nothing like it used to be. My foot got stronger, the pads under my toes thickened up.

I did eventually get a pair of Vivos, and they were nice, but my absolute favorites are Crocs. Almost no support, enough cushioning to keep you from hurting your feet on sharps outside, and toe room! Enough toe room to flex and curl your toes as much as you wish. I now think that the most important thing for foot health is to have absolutely no restriction on your toes. Your toes should flex and spread as you walk, the way they were designed to.

I now walk to work almost 90 minutes every morning. My feet don’t hurt before, during, or after my walk. Hallelujah!