Bare feet – returning to the natural movement

For a long time I hated running. I’ve tried many types of shoes, gone to specialized stores, had my feet stared at or recorded while running at thread mills. I’ve been standing on glass boxes and being told I was pronating and need specialized shoes made for compensating for that. Another time someone told me I wasn’t pronating and that was why I got blisters from my shoes.
However I tried I could never find a pair of shoes that didn’t give me blisters or hurt me after five kilometers of running. I also seemed to be getting pains around the inner part of my knee joint and in my ankles. Typically I would be all muddy on the inside of my chins after running, hitting them with my shoes repeatedly. After a while I just gave up. It was no fun, only getting blisters and pains every time I went for a run.
Jealously I was listening to my friends, talking about the wonderful feeling while running marathons and what not. I wanted that too!

And then, a year ago, the barefoot shoes came into my life! I hung around with a friend that basically wont walk in anything else. 
I was quite skeptical to begin with, even though I was used to training bare foot or in socks in my Martial Arts. And it took a while, quite a while, to get used to them. The first session lasted five minutes in the store, and then my arches were cramping.
A month later I could actually make a short walk and yet another month later I could wear them for a whole day.

In the beginning of this summer I made the big step and started running with them.
I made som big changes in my life and thought “what the heck – it’s time for me to pick up the running again!”.
It was like a dream! Floating ahead on the track, silently. My feet were flattening and contracting all by them selves, my posture was good, nothing hurt and I felt like I could run forever!
Luckily I held my self down and settled for the 3 kilometers that was the initial plan, my shins were sore for two days after that. But no pain in my knees, no hitting my self, no blisters.

That’s when I got really curious. How come we make all these specialized shoes, making people believe that our feet can’t do what they are designed for? That evolution so brilliantly built up for us, to enable us to walk and run and move around upright.
Because when you think of it, what’s the best way of breaking an arch? By pushing on in from underneath, of course!
And that’s exactly what we are doing with our arch supports, extra cushioning and what not they put in the shoes.
All that cushioning also takes away the normal way of putting your foot down while running. Instead of letting the front of your foot land first and spread out the weight through it’s normal arch, you’ll be starting with your heel.
Putting all of the impact on the heel will take away the natural cushioning of your foot and the knee will be trying to soften the force going through your leg, something it’s not designed for.
The impact will travel through your leg and up into your hip, which can tilt your pelvis forward and your lower back will be forced to arch more to soften the impact.
Running bare foot or with uncusioned shoes will allow the fron of your foot to take up the impact and your body to adjust according to the tension put into it.
There is evidence pointing toward less injuries when running bare foot because it allows the body to react to the forces naturally. (1) (2)

Sources:
1) http://www.sportsci.org/jour/0103/mw.htm 
2) http://barefootrunning.fas.harvard.edu/

More reading:
http://zenhabits.net/barefoot-running/
http://borntorun.org/

Why go for drugs when you can benefit from training?

Recently a new study showed that the benefits of exercising might be impaired by the commonly prescribed, lipid lowering statins (named Zocord, Simvastatin and Crestor etc).

Cholesterol lowering drugs are commonly subscribed to people with, what in medicine is called, elevated blood cholesterol levels. Usually life style changes, like increased exercise, is enouraged.
Some doctors even suggest people over 50 should take these drugs for preventive reasons.

People who are overweight, sedentary, in the middle-age with an increased risk for heart disease are the ones who would benefit most from aerobic exercise. But they are also the ones that usually have elevated blood lipid levels and would be put on statins.
A common side effect of statins are muscle aches, and athletes with high demands on their muscular system might have such difficulties with the statins that they need to go on other alternative medications. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22036108
This is widely known among doctors, but until now there has been no or very little research on the mechanism behind this.

In this study a group of people that hadn’t been exercising regularly the last year, with signs of metabolic syndrome (wide waistlines/excess abdominal fat and increased blood pressure), and with slightly elevated blood cholesterol levels were divided into two groups.

Both groups were put on a regular, supervised 12 week, exercise program, visiting the university clinic five times/week, walking or jogging on a treadmill for 45 minutes in a speed about 65-70 % of their individual aerobic maximum.
Their aerobic fitness was measured and muscle biopsies were taken before and after the trial. No changes in diet were allowed.
One group started taking 40 mg of Zocord, a commonly subscribed statin, at the beginning of the trial.

The unmedicated group improved their aerobic ability with 10 % on average, and muscle biopsies showed an increase in an enzyme produced by the mitochondria – the energy producing machine in the muscle cells, indicating the normal response to exercise in muscle.
In the group taking statins the average improvement was 1 %, and for some participants it sank below their starting point. When looking at their muscles the levels of the enzyme hadn’t increased as much or even lowered compared to the base line.

These findings suggests that statins might impair the benefits of aeorbic exercise. The medication might actually lower the number of mitochondria in muscle cells, making it more difficult to exercise.
This is a concern, since the level of aerobic fitness is more closely correlated to the risk of the premature death in heart disease than cholesterol levels.

This calls for careful thinking before anyone should start with lipid lowering statins. Both prescriber and patient should be cautious. Is this really needed? How high is the risk, and is it really lowered by drugs?

If you can do it on your own, why take medicines with the risk of all the side effects, especially if it blunts your own efforts?
Have a discussion with your doctor before you get on them. And if you already are on medication, discuss if you really need it! You might do better with some regular exercise when it comes to lowering your risk for heart disease, and also enjoy the benefits of feeling strong and healthy!

Go natural as long as you can – that’s my suggestion!

Sources: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23583255