Steps For Keeping Your Feet A Healthy Foundation
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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 🙂
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Willpower: A Muscle To Flex, Or Spoons To Conserve?
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Willpower: A Muscle To Flex, Or Spoons To Conserve?
We have previously written about motivation; this one’s not about that.
Rather, it’s about willpower itself, and especially, the maintenance of such. Which prompts the question…
Is willpower something that can be built up through practice, or something that is a finite resource that can be expended?
That depends on you—and your experiences.
- Some people believe willpower is a metaphorical “muscle” that must be exercised to be built up
- Some people believe willpower is a matter of metaphorical “spoons” that can be used up
A quick note on spoon theory: this traces its roots to Christine Miserandino’s 2003 essay about chronic illness and the management of limited energy. She details how she explained this to a friend in a practical fashion, she gave her a bunch of spoons from her kitchen, as an arbitrary unit of energy currency. These spoons would then need to be used to “pay” for tasks done; soon her friend realised that if she wanted to make it through the day, she was going to have to give more forethought to how she would “spend” her spoons, or she’d run out and be helpless (and perhaps hungry and far from home) before the day’s end. So, the kind of forethought and planning that a lot of people with chronic illnesses have to give to every day’s activities.
You can read it here: But You Don’t Look Sick? The Spoon Theory
So, why do some people believe one way, and some believe the other? It comes down to our experiences of our own willpower being built or expended. Researchers (Dr. Vanda Siber et al.) studied this, and concluded:
❝The studies support the idea that what people believe about willpower depends, at least in part, on recent experiences with tasks as being energizing or draining.❞
Source: Autonomous Goal Striving Promotes a Nonlimited Theory About Willpower
In other words, there’s a difference between going out running each morning while healthy, and doing so with (for example) lupus.
On a practical level, this translates to practicable advice:
- If something requires willpower but is energizing, this is the muscle kind! Build it.
- If something requires willpower and is draining, this is the spoons kind! Conserve it.
Read the above two bullet-points as many times as necessary to cement them into your hippocampus, because they are the most important message of today’s newsletter.
Do you tend towards the “nonlimited” belief, despite getting tired? If so, here’s why…
There is something that can continue to empower us even when we get physically fatigued, and that’s the extent to which we truly get a choice about what we’re doing. In other words, that “Autonomous” at the front of the title of the previous study, isn’t just word salad.
- If we perceive ourselves as choosing to do what we are doing, with free will and autonomy (i.e., no externally created punitive consequences), we will feel much more empowered, and that goes for our willpower too.
- If we perceive ourselves as doing what we have to (or suffer the consequences), we’ll probably do it, but we’ll find it draining, and that goes for our willpower too.
Until such a time as age-related physical and mental decline truly take us, we as humans tend to gradually accumulate autonomy in our lives. We start as literal babies, then are children with all important decisions made for us, then adolescents building our own identity and ways of doing things, then young adults launching ourselves into the world of adulthood (with mixed results), to a usually more settled middle-age that still has a lot of external stressors and responsibilities, to old age, where we’ve often most things in order, and just ourselves and perhaps our partner to consider.
Consequently…
Age differences in implicit theories about willpower: why older people endorse a nonlimited theory
…which explains why the 30-year-old middle-manager might break down and burn out and stop going to work, while an octogenarian is busy training for a marathon daily before getting back to their daily book-writing session, without fail.
One final thing…
If you need a willpower boost, have a snack*. If you need to willpower boost to avoid snacking, then plan for this in advance by finding a way to keep your blood sugars stable. Because…
The physiology of willpower: linking blood glucose to self-control
*Something that will keep your blood sugars stable, not spike them. Nuts are a great example, unless you’re allergic to such, because they have a nice balance of carbohydrates, protein, and healthy fats.
Want more on that? Read: 10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars
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Water’s Counterintuitive Properties
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
❝Why are we told to drink more water for everything, even if sometimes it seems like the last thing we need? Bloated? Drink water. Diarrhea? Drink water. Nose running like a tap? Drink water❞
While water will not fix every ill, it can fix a lot, or at least stop it from being worse!
Our bodies are famously over 60% water (exact figure will depend on how well-hydrated you are, obviously, as well as your body composition in terms of muscle and fat). Our cells (which are mostly full of mostly water) need replacing all the time, and almost everything that needs transporting almost anywhere is taken there by blood (which is also mostly water). And if we need something moving out of the body? Water is usually going to be a large part of how it gets ejected.
In the cases of the examples you gave…
- Bloating: bloating is often a matter of water retention, which often happens as a result of having too much salt, and/or sometimes too much fat. So the body’s homeostatic system (the system that tries to maintain all kinds of equilibrium, keeping salt balance, temperature, pH, and many other things in their respective “Goldilocks zones”) tries to add more water to where it’s needed to balance out the salt etc.
- Consequently, drinking more water means the body will note “ok, balance restored, no need to keep retaining water there, excess salts being safely removed using all this lovely water”.
- Diarrhea: this is usually a case of a bacterial infection, though there can be other causes. Whether for that reason or another, the body has decided that it needs to give your gut an absolute wash-out, and it can only do that from the inside—so it uses as much of the body’s water as it needs to do that.
- Consequently, drinking more water means that you are replenishing the water that the body has already 100% committed to using. If you don’t drink water, you’ll still have diarrhea, you’ll just start to get dangerously dehydrated.
- Runny nose: this is usually a case of either fighting a genuine infection, or else fighting something mistaken for a pathogen (e.g. pollen, or some other allergen). The mucus is an important part of the body’s defense: it traps the microbes (be they bacteria, virus, whatever) and water-slides them out of the body.
- Consequently, drinking more water means the body can keep the water-slide going. Otherwise, you’ll just get gradually more dehydrated (because as with diarrhea, your body will prioritize this function over maintaining water reserves—water reserves are there to be used if necessary, is the body’s philosophy) and if the well runs dry, you’ll just be dehydrated and have a higher pathogen-count still in your body.
Some previous 10almonds articles that might interest you:
- Hydration Mythbusting
- When To Take Electrolytes (And When We Shouldn’t!)
- Keeping Your Kidneys Healthy (Especially After 60)
Would you like this section to be bigger? If so, send us more questions!
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- Bloating: bloating is often a matter of water retention, which often happens as a result of having too much salt, and/or sometimes too much fat. So the body’s homeostatic system (the system that tries to maintain all kinds of equilibrium, keeping salt balance, temperature, pH, and many other things in their respective “Goldilocks zones”) tries to add more water to where it’s needed to balance out the salt etc.
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Fermenting Everything – by Andy Hamilton
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This is not justanother pickling book! This is, instead, what it says on the front cover, “fermenting everything”.
Ok, maybe not literally everything, but every kind of thing that can reasonably be fermented, and it’s probably a lot more things than you might think.
From habanero chutney to lacto-lemonade, aioli to kombucha, Ukrainian fermented tomatoes to kvass. We could go on, but we’d soon run out of space. You get the idea. If it’s a fermented product (food, drink, condiment) and you’ve heard of it, there’s probably a recipe in here.
All in all, this is a great way to get in your gut-healthy daily dose of fermented products!
He does also talk safety, and troubleshooting too. And so long as you have a collection of big jars and a fairly normally-furnished kitchen, you shouldn’t need any more special equipment than that, unless you decide to you your fermentation skills for making beer (which does need some extra equipment, and he offers advice on that—our advice as a health science publication is “don’t drink beer”, though).
Bottom line: with this in hand, you can create a lot of amazing foods/drinks/condiments that are not only delicious, but also great for gut health.
Click here to check out Fermenting Everything, and widen your culinary horizons!
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Gut Feelings – by Dr Will Cole
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More and more, science is uncovering links between our gut health and the rest of our health—including our mental health! We all know “get some fiber and consider probiotics”, but what else is there that we can do?
Quite a lot, actually. And part of it, which Dr. Cole also explores, is the fact that the gut-brain highway is a two-way street!
The book looks a lot especially at the particular relationship between shame and eating. The shame need not initially be about eating, though it can certainly end up that way too. But any kind of shame—be it relating to one’s body, work, relationship, or anything else, can not only have a direct effect on the gut, but indirect too:
Once our “eating our feelings” instinct kicks in, things can spiral from there, after all.
So, Dr. Cole walks us through tackling this from both sides—nutrition and psychology. With chapters full of tips and tricks, plus a 21-day plan (not a diet plan, a habit integration plan), this book hits shame (and inflammation, incidentally) hard and leads us into much healthier habits and cycles.
In short: if you’d like to have a better relationship with your food, improve your gut health, and/or reduce inflammation, this is definitely a book for you!
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What is HRT? HRT and Hormones Explained
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In this short video, Dr. Sophie Newton explains how menopausal HRT, sometimes called just MHT, is the use of exogenous (didn’t come from your body) to replace/supplement the endogenous hormones (made in your body) that aren’t being made in the quantities that would result in ideal health.
Bioidentical hormones are, as the name suggests, chemically identical to those made in the body; there is no difference, all the way down to the atomic structure.
People are understandably wary of “putting chemicals into the body”, but in fact, everything is a chemical and those chemicals are also found in your body, just not in the numbers that we might always like.
In the case of hormones, these chemical messengers are simply there to tell cells what to do, so having the correct amount of hormones ensures that all the cells that need to get a certain message, get it.
In the case of estrogen specifically, while it’s considered a sex hormone (and it is), it’s responsible for a lot more than just the reproductive system, which is why many people without correct estrogen levels (such as peri- or post-menopause, though incorrect levels can happen earlier in life for other reasons too) can severely feel their absence in a whole stack of ways.
What ways? More than we can list here, but some are discussed in the video:
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Want to know more?
You might like our previous main features:
- What Does “Balance Your Hormones” Even Mean?
- What You Should Have Been Told About The Menopause Beforehand
- Menopausal HRT: Bioidentical vs Animal
Take care!
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Peaceful Kitchen – by Catherine Perez
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
The author, a keen cook and Registered Dietician with a Master’s in same, covers the basics of the science of nutrition as relevant to her recipes, but first and foremost this is not a science textbook—it’s a cookbook, and its pages contain more love for the art than citations for the (perfectly respectable) science.
Mexican and Dominican cuisine are the main influences in this book, but there are dishes from around the world too.
The recipes themselves are… Comparable in difficulty to the things we often feature in our recipes section here at 10almonds. They’re probably not winning any restaurants Michelin stars, but they’re not exactly student survival recipes either. They’re made from mostly non-obscure whole foods, nutritionally-dense ingredients at that, with minimal processed foods involved.
That said, she does take a “add, don’t subtract” approach to nutrition, i.e. focussing more on adding in diversity of plants than on “don’t eat this; don’t eat that” mandates.
If there’s any criticism to be levelled at the book, it’s that in most cases we’d multiply the spices severalfold, but that’s not a big problem as readers can always judge that individually; she’s given the basic information of which spices in which proportions, which is the key knowledge.
Bottom line: if you’re looking to expand your plant-based cooking repertoire, this one is a fine choice.
Click here to check out Peaceful Kitchen, and try some new things!
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