10 Things You Do That You Didn't Know Ruin Your Life

2. Wearing Shoes

Take your shoe off and put in on the table in front of you (whilst trying not to look like a crazy person), the chances are the the toes will curl up at the end. As you may be aware, your actual toes do not curl up at the end. This artificial rocker is to make it easier to roll your foot forwards as you walk. This ultimately alters your gait and even your foot shape. It is a known phenomenon in the shoe industry for people, mostly women, to complain of tingling and pain in their feet in the summer, caused by the switch from structured winter boots to flimsier summer footwear. The summer footwear is actually much closer to bare feet, but shoes alter our feet so much that it now feels unnatural to go without. You may also have noticed that, when you walk around in bare feet, it feels as though you are "thudding" a bit. This is because shoes will generally make you walk with a pronounced "heel strike", taking longer strides, thudding your heel down then rocking forwards on the sole. You can do this in shoes because of the cushioning but, when walking barefoot, a mid-strike is more comfortable. All that padding is not necessarily a good thing either. A study found that people were much more likely to injure themselves in expensive running shoes, as opposed to cheap ones. This is partly because the shoe reduces the amount of tactile feedback you get from the ground and partly because people wearing them felt as though they were less vulnerable to injury. Right up to the point where all the bones in their feet shattered. There is a trend at the moment for barefoot running, but even that has its own dangers as people who make the switch are used to running in shoes, and will often do more harm than good.