Running barefoot causes less collision force to the feet than running in cushioned shoes, a new study says.

Researchers reporting in the Jan. 28 issue of the journal Nature show that runners who run without shoes usually land on the balls of their feet, or sometimes flat-footed, compared to runners in shoes, who tend to land on their heels first.

Cushioned running shoes, which date back only to the 1970s, may seem comfortable but may actually contribute to foot injuries, say Daniel Lieberman, PhD, professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University, and colleagues.

The scientists, using motion and force analyses, showed that barefoot runners who strike on the fore-foot (land on the balls of their feet) generate smaller collision forces than shod rear-foot strikers.

The researchers say that although there are anecdotal reports of reduced injuries in barefoot populations, more work is needed to test their view that either barefoot runners or those with minimal footwear (such as sandals or moccasins) have reduced injury rates.

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So we’ve been barefoot, like every other animal, for hundreds of thousands of years, but all of a sudden we need shoes? I don’t think so. Here are some recommendations for transitioning to barefoot, to get as much barefoot time as your work and lifestyle allow:

1.  “The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Barefoot Running”  by  Leo Babauta.

2.  “How To Start Barefoot Running”

3.  “So, you wanna start running barefoot?”

4.  Advice from Dr. Daniel Howell, who wrote “The Barefoot Book”

5.  “Barefoot is Better” by Dan Peterson

6.  “The Effect of Running Shoes on Lower Extremity Joint Torques” by D. Casey Kerrigan, MD, Jason R. Franz, MS, Geoffrey S. Keenan, MD, Jay Dicharry, MPT, Ugo Della Croce, PhD, and Robert P. Wilder, MD. (Published in PM&R: The journal of injury, function and rehabilitation, Volume 1, Issue 12 (December 2009), published by Elsevier.)

But I’d disagree with this sentence:  ”These findings confirm that while the typical construction of modern-day running shoes provides good support and protection of the foot itself.” Running shoes are bad: they are not intended to work within the limits and nature of the human body and human foot but to supposedly remedy deficiencies in human nature. If research and design of running shoes were premised on the former (i.e., nature), not the latter (i.e., deficiencies), they’d look and perform much better.

7.  “To Run Better, Start by Ditching Your Nikes” by Dylan Tweney

Bottom line: The study at hand provides a good reason to limit your intake of ‘healthy whole grains’ and other gluten containing foods, regardless of whether you suffer from celiac or not. Whether the established detrimental effects of gluten on the integrity of the intestinal wall and the increased leakage of bacterially produced endotoxins from the highly unfavorably changes in the gut microbiome in response to the high fat diets (Hildebrandt. 2009) are part of, or even the primary cause of these observations still has to be elucidated. The same goes for strategies to counter the translocation of the endotoxins across the gut lining (cf. ‘Shedding some light on the leaky gut’) and the dose response relationship between the total amount of gluten in your diet and its effects on your metabolism. With 7% of pure gluten, it goes without saying that you would basically have to live of wheat in order to get to anywhere similar amounts of gluten in the diet… that said: Is it possible that the effects occur only in the presence of the high fat diet? After all, this alone has been shown to favor a pro-inflammatory gut microbiome.

For your health and for your children’s health, avoid grains. Focus on meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. Pastured, organic products are the best; buy from a local farmer with good farming practices, if you can.

Following on the heels of the AVMA’s condemnation of raw pet food came a similar position statement by the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) that it “does not advocate or endorse feeding pets any raw or dehydrated nonsterilized foods, including treats that are of animal origin.”

…

What the AAHA neglects to mention is the GI tracts of dogs and cats evolved to handle heavy bacterial loads from food. Your pet’s body is well equipped to deal with heavy doses of familiar and strange bacteria because nature built him to catch, kill and immediately consume his prey.

Your dog or cat’s stomach is highly acidic, with a pH range of 1-2.5. Nothing much can survive that acidic environment – it exists to keep your pet safe from potentially contaminated raw meat and other consumables. And in addition to the acid, dogs and cats also naturally produce a tremendous amount of bile. Bile is both anti-parasitic and anti-pathogenic. So if something potentially harmful isn’t entirely neutralized by stomach acid, the bile is a secondary defense. And your pet’s powerful pancreatic enzymes also help break down and digest food.

© Copyright 1997-2013 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.

Partly my help — but partly her hard work and intelligence, and partly the teacher and the amount of rigor being demanded by the teacher compared to past math courses.

Did you know that the gene that expresses Down’s syndrome becomes active in the absence of the mineral zinc. Cystic fibrosis is caused by a deficiency in selenium in the pregnant mother, and cleft lip is caused by not enough vitamin B12.

Want your children, your loved ones, and your self to optimize your learning ability and psychological health? Eat right. Do Paleo/primal/Weston A Price.

A frequent misunderstanding in the world of health is that having no symptoms equals health. This is not so. Symptoms are often the last thing to happen when the is suffering from malfunction. Being symptom free can be a curse, because there are no warning signs until something dramatic happens. [Editor's note. I whipped this up quickly so I'm sorry for grammar/spelling errors.]

After discussing, with technical exhibits/measurements, some systemic failures of an individual’s body functioning, Christian says:

He knows that the process will take time, probably years. Repairing tissue and re-growing bone takes time, but he is also certain of a couple of big picture ideas about health and aging:

1. What people call “aging” is often not aging at all. It is the resulting degeneration that comes from chronic exposure to things like food sensitivity, infections, and toxicity which gradually erode the health of the body.
2. Being free of symptoms, whether it is because of symptom suppressing medications or because of one’s body, for one reason or another, not producing noticeable symptoms (yet), is a dangerous proposition. (Who knows, if the H Pylori and digestive issues hadn’t been discovered, our guy might suffer a “sudden” fracture a couple of decades in the future, or his teeth might begin to fall out of his mouth, or he might develop cancer because of a lack of proper nutrition.) [Editor's note: On the last point, read up on Bruce Ames' triage theory of aging.]

Bottom line: Disease prevention and functional investigation of one’s body should ideally start long before one ever experiences symptoms.

This is the way health should be dealt with. Another win for Aristotle and Hippocrates over Plato.

Dysbiosis treatment involves addressing food allergies and intolerances, as well as any underlying nutritional deficiencies caused by malabsorption or inefficient digestion. Appropriate probiotics, enzymes, and nutraceuticals must be prescribed to help reduce inflammation in the GI tract.

Probiotics are an extremely important part in the treatment of dysbiosis. They reseed your pet’s gut with good bacteria and prevent an overgrowth of bad bacteria, which returns the intestine and mucosal lining to good health.
…
In general, removing highly processed, high-stress foods from a sick pet’s diet in favor of a balanced species-appropriate, low-stress diet, plus appropriate supplements to address inflammation and yeast, if necessary, and support of other organ systems including the liver and pancreas, can relieve symptoms, address the root cause of the leaky gut, and get the pet on the road to recovery.

© Copyright 1997-2013 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.

An excerpt:

Individuals with the silent version of the disease are just as likely (or even more likely) as those with symptomatic celiac disease to develop or have osteoporosis, lymphoma of the small bowel, and other autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (hypothyroidism), and perhaps even dementia[2],[3],[4],[5],[6],[7],[8].

Additionally, certain symptoms or disorders like constipation and bloating, diarrhea, gastroesophageal reflux, fatigue, depression, skin rashes, muscle aches and muscle damage, neuropathy (nerve dysfunction, especially motor and sensory dysfunction), migraine headaches, seizures, kidney disease (IgA nephropathy), type I diabetes, infertility, and mouth sores may be present but medical providers may fail to suspect an association with gluten[9],[10],[11],[12],[13],[14],[15],[16],[17],[18].