AHS16 - Ancestral Health Symposium 2016

Once upon a time, without shoes of any kind, humans navigated challenging terrain all the way from Africa to Europe, China, and Australia. Our feet are more capable than most people realize, but fear of the risks and dangers of going barefoot prevents most of us from accessing all their features. Crucially, when humans evolved to be exceptional bipedal endurance runners, the sole’s ability to gauge impact forces was a perfect way to assess how efficiently we were moving. Because impact forces in running result from sudden vertical deceleration and correlate with energy wasted against gravity, sensing these forces became a reliable signal to the body to engage more core muscles (especially the glutes) in order to move more efficiently (forward, instead of up and down). The loss of this sensory input due to modern soled footwear is a major contributor to core weakness and musculoskeletal dysfunction.