Important Steps For Good Health

This is Dr. Kelly Starrett. He’s a physiotherapist, author, speaker, trainer. He has been described as a “celebrity” and “founding father” of CrossFit. He mostly speaks and writes about mobility in general; today we’re going to be looking at what he has to say specifically about our feet.

A strong foundation

“An army marches on its stomach”, Napoleon famously wrote.

More prosaically: an army marches on its feet, and good foot-care is a top priority for soldiers—indeed, in some militaries, even so much as negligently getting blisters is a military offense.

Most of us are not soldiers, but there’s a lesson to be learned here:

Your feet are the foundation for much of the rest of your health and effectiveness.

KISS for feet

No, not like that.

Rather: “Keep It Simple, Stupid”

Dr. Starrett is not only a big fan of not overcomplicating things, but also, he tells us how overcomplicating things can actively cause problems. When it comes to footwear, for example, he advises:

❝When you wear shoes, wear the flat kind. If you’re walking the red carpet on Oscar night, fine, go ahead and wear a shoe with a heel. Once in a while is okay.

But most of the time, you should wear shoes that are flat and won’t throw your biological movement hardware into disarray.

When you have to wear shoes, whether it’s running shoes, work shoes, or combat boots, buy the flat kind, also known as “zero drop”—meaning that the heel is not raised above the forefoot (at all).

What you want to avoid, or wean yourself away from, are shoes with the heels raised higher off the ground than the forefeet.❞

Of course, going barefoot is great for this, but may not be an option for all of us when out and about. And in the home, going barefoot (or shod in just socks) will only confer health benefits if we’re actually on our feet! So… How much time do you spend on your feet at home?

Allow your feet to move like feet

By evolution, the human body is built for movement—especially walking and running. That came with moving away from hanging around in trees for fruit, to hunting and gathering between different areas of the savannah. Today, our hunting and gathering may be done at the local grocery store, but we still need to keep our mobility, especially when it comes to our feet.

Now comes the flat footwear you don’t want: flip-flops and similar

If we wear flip-flops, or other slippers or shoes that hold onto our feet only at the front, we’re no longer walking like we’re supposed to. Instead of being the elegant product of so much evolution, we’re now walking like those AT-AT walkers in Star Wars, you know, the ones that fell over so easily?

Our feet need to be able to tilt naturally while walking/running, without our footwear coming off.

Golden rule for this: if you can’t run in them, you shouldn’t be walking in them

Exception: if for example you need something on your feet for a minute or two in the shower at the gym/pool, flip-flops are fine. But anything more than that, and you want something better.

Watch your step

There’s a lot here that’s beyond the scope of what we can include in this short newsletter, but:

If we stand or walk or run incorrectly, we’re doing gradual continual damage to our feet and ankles (potentially also our knees and hips, which problems in turn have a knock-on effect for our spine, and you get the idea—this is Bad™)

Some general pointers for keeping things in good order include:

• Your weight should be mostly on the balls of your feet, not your heels
• Your feet should be pretty much parallel, not turned out or in
• When standing, your center of gravity should be balanced between heel and forefoot

Quick tip for accomplishing this last one: Stand comfortably, your feet parallel, shoulder-width apart. Now, go up on your tip-toes. When you’ve done so, note where your spine is, and keep it there (apart from in its up-down axis) when you slowly go back to having your feet flat on the ground, so it’s as though your spine is sliding down a pole that’s fixed in place.

If you do this right, your center of gravity will now be perfectly aligned with where it’s supposed to be. It might feel a bit weird at first, but you’ll get used to it, and can always reset it whenever you want/need, by repeating the exercise.

If you’d like to know more from Dr. Starrett, you can check out his website here 🙂

Protein vs Sarcopenia

This is Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. A medical doctor, she’s board-certified in family medicine, and has also engaged in research and clinical practice in the fields of geriatrics and nutritional sciences.

A quick note…

We’re going to be talking a bit about protein metabolism today, and it’s worth noting that Dr. Lyon personally is vehemently against vegetarianism/veganism, and considers red meat to be healthy.

Scientific consensus on the other hand, holds that vegetarianism and veganism are fine for most people if pursued in an informed and mindful fashion, that white meat and fish are also fine for most people, and red meat is simply not.

If you’d like a recap on the science of any of that:

• Protein: How Much Do We Need, Really?
• Plant vs Animal Protein: Diversity is Key
• Do We Need Animal Products to be Healthy?

Nevertheless, if we look at the science that she provides, the advice is sound when applied to protein in general and without an undue focus on red meat.

How much protein is enough?

In our article linked above, we gave 1–2g/kg/day

Dr. Lyons gives the more specific 1.6g/kg/day for adults older than 40 (this is where sarcopenia often begins!) and laments that many sources offer 0.8g/kg.

To be clear, that “per kilogram” means per kilogram of your bodyweight. For Americans, this means dividing lbs by 2.2 to get the kg figure.

Why so much protein?

Protein is needed to rebuild not just our muscles, but also our bones, joint tissues, and various other parts of us:

We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of

Additionally, our muscles themselves are important for far more than just moving us (and other things) around.

As Dr. Lyon explains: sarcopenia, the (usually age-related) loss of muscle mass, does more than just make us frail; it also messes up our metabolism, which in turn messes up… Everything else, really. Because everything depends on that.

This is because our muscles themselves use a lot of our energy, and/but also store energy as glycogen, so having less of them means:

• getting a slower metabolism
• the energy that can’t be stored in muscle tissue gets stored somewhere else (like the liver, and/or visceral fat)

So, while for example the correlation between maintaining strong muscles and avoiding non-alcoholic fatty liver disease may not be immediately obvious, it is clear when one follows the metabolic trail to its inevitable conclusion.

Same goes for avoiding diabetes, heart disease, and suchlike, though those things are a little more intuitive.

How can we get so much protein?

It can seem daunting at first to get so much protein if you’re not used to it, especially as protein is an appetite suppressant, so you’ll feel full sooner.

It can especially seem daunting to get so much protein if you’re trying to avoid too many carbs, and here’s where Dr. Lyon’s anti-vegetarianism does have a point: it’s harder to get lean protein without meat/fish.

That said, “harder” does not mean “impossible” and even she acknowledges that lentils are great for this.

If you’re not vegetarian or vegan, collagen supplementation is a good way to make up any shortfall, by the way.

And for everyone, there are protein supplements available if we want them (usually based on whey protein or soy protein)

Anything else we need to do?

Yes! Eating protein means nothing if you don’t do any resistance work to build and maintain muscle. This can take various forms, and Dr. Lyon recommends lifting weights and/or doing bodyweight resistance training (calisthenics, Pilates, etc).

Here are some previous articles of ours, consistent with the above:

• Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)
• Overdone It? How To Speed Up Recovery After Exercise
• How To Do HIIT (Without Wrecking Your Body)
• Exercises To Do (And Ones To Avoid) If You Have Osteoporosis

Take care!