Barefoot Shoes: Are They Healthy for You?

When I was in high school, barefoot shoes meant those weird toe shoes that my calculus teacher wore. They were weird, they were pretty expensive, and nobody really understood why they were a thing. Fast forward a decade and some change and there is a much larger push for the concept of barefoot shoes.

Proponents of barefoot wear cite concerns for foot health and development as well as impacts on posture. Luckily, these days there are way more options beyond the toe shoes, including options that look more or less like any other shoe. 

Talking about barefoot shoes may seem like a departure from our typical talk about natural living and reducing toxins, but trust me, it is right up our alley. Here at The Whole FamiLee, we are all about exploring the science behind holistic health and natural wellness. While chemicals are a major part of this, there is so much more to living a healthy, holistic lifestyle. (Check out our previous post on 3 ways you can start living naturally and improve your health.)

Here, we try to live as naturally as possible to support holistic health, and sometimes this has more practical applications. Today this means evaluating our physical movement. Specifically, does our choice of footwear impact our health from a holistic and natural perspective? Are barefoot shoes good for your health?

If you’re interested to know more about what barefoot shoes are and their benefits, keep reading. Here’s what to expect from this article:

What are barefoot shoes?

The problem with conventional footwear

1. Compress the toes
2. Restrict natural movement
3. Reduce foot strength
4. Reduce ground feedback

How can barefoot shoes improve foot health?

Restore natural foot shape
Improve foot strength
Considerations for children

Other important notes

Transition slowly
Feel free to dabble
Barefoot athletics
Selection

Summary / TLDR

What are barefoot shoes?

Barefoot shoes are pretty simple when it comes down to it, and that’s kind of the point. Barefoot shoes, also called minimalist shoes by some, are shoes that are designed to protect your feet from the dirt and hazards of the ground without changing the functionality of your foot. Essentially, barefoot shoes should allow you to feel like you’re walking more or less without shoes, but make it less likely you’ll poke a nail through your foot…

Barefoot shoes are designed with four main criteria in mind: WIDE, THIN, FLAT, FLEXIBLE. The toe box should be wide enough to allow your toes to splay out as they would on the ground. The soles should be thin for better ground feedback as well as flat–no raised heel or toe spring–to keep natural spine alignment. And finally, the sole should be flexible in all directions to allow for the full range of motion of your foot.

You may be wondering why this would even be a concern or why it would be necessary to wear this kind of shoe. Let’s get into some of the arguments for barefoot shoes.

The argument in favor of barefoot shoes

Proponents of barefoot footwear state that modern footwear is simply bad for the foot. This is because most modern footwear is not made with the shape or biomechanics of the foot in mind. 

The foot, naturally, when standing barefoot on the ground, moves in certain ways. Your toes grip and spread. Your arch, the connection of your metatarsals and phalanges (ball of your foot, basically), and your ankle move through an extension. There’s a specific place on the ball of your foot you land on when placing the foot forward. 

In a lot of shoes, these things change. Most shoes compress the toes, some worse than others. The natural way your toes want to spread out is impossible in a lot of shoes. This impacts the ability of your toes to grip and the joints to extend. Most conventional shoes are pretty stiff, reducing the extension of your arch and ankle as you step. Something as simple as the construction of the thickness of the sole (think about how your sneakers have a taller heel cushion than at the ball of your foot) changes the way your foot moves as well as the posture of your whole body. 

All of these changes impact the way your feet and whole body move.

Let’s use a couple shoe examples to understand this better. 

A high heel, especially with a pointed toe. Clearly, where you step is going to be different. Try walking around barefoot on the ball of your feet, as if you were in a high heel. It’s weird, your foot was not “designed” to do this. The shoe is what allows you to walk like this for a longer period of time, with differing levels of comfort depending on the shoe and the individual, obviously. The way you grip with your toes is different. 

A thick-soled work or winter boot. Depending on the boot, your toes may be compressed a little or a lot. Boots typically have a pretty large heel that makes the difference in height of your heel and ball of your foot from the ground very different. Lastly, boots are usually supremely inflexible, not allowing your joints to move through their whole extensions. 

A tennis shoe. Even a tennis shoe, which is typically designed for running, walking, or other sporting activities, is going to change the way your foot functions. Most of this has to do with the heel height, the compression of the toes, the inflexibility of the sole, and the general shape of the shoe basically molding to your foot. All of this keeps your foot from doing most of the movement work, as the basic functions are all supported by some aspect of the shoe. 

Now. Why should you care?

Proponents of barefoot walking state that at worst, shoes are awful for your feet, completely restricting them and forcing them into unnatural positions that have long been understood to be harmful for foot and spine health. Hello, high heels, I’m looking at you. This is why doctors will recommend pregnant women stick to flat footwear. Your spine and feet are under so much pressure anyway, the elevated heel changes your posture in such a way that puts even more pressure on your spine.

But barefoot proponents aren’t just after extreme forms of footwear, they claim that boots and even tennis shoes are a less-than-best option for you. All of the concerns essentially boil down to the fact that most shoes of every design style out there do a few things:

1. Compress the toes

Have you ever seen older women with their big toe pointed in at basically a right angle? This is called a bunion, or hallux valgus. I used to see this a lot with my fellow cross-country runners too. This usually occurs because of compression of the toes into a narrow toe box over a long period of time. This isn’t “normal” or “natural” and can cause issues such as pain when walking or standing and can impact balance. 

This is one of the biggest arguments for barefoot wear because it is an issue that can really impact the developing feet of children and many are arguing for, at a minimum, wider toe boxes for children’s shoes. Think about the older lady. She has spent a lifetime with her toes jammed into narrow toe boxes. Or the cross country runner, spending hours repetitively jamming his crunched-up toes into the front of his shoe. It happens over time.

2. Restrict natural movement

As we explored some above, most shoes restrict the ability of your foot to move through its full range of motion. This could be straight restriction without assistance (think high heels and even a lot of boots) or restriction due to assistance (think running shoes designed to support various parts of the foot). 

The problem with this, beyond potentially impacting your ability to move through that range of motion even when you’re barefoot (a lot of muscle strength and joint mobility tends to be use it or lose it), is you simply can’t move normally in shoes. 

3. Reduce foot strength

This is another major concern for barefoot proponents. Let’s examine the tennis shoe, arguably a necessity for runners, walkers, and most normal people… Barefoot proponents point out that tennis shoes are doing a lot of the work of the intrinsic foot muscle for you, thus resulting in weak feet. 

Now, if you run, you’ve probably explored the importance of strengthening your feet through various exercises. Barefoot runners would state that if you wore barefoot shoes more often, you wouldn’t need to do this so much. Your feet are weak because you’re handicapping them with your shoes. It’s a very interesting point and there is research to support that this may be true. More interesting, a lot of sports medicine programs are exploring the use of barefoot shoes and training to reduce injuries related to intrinsic foot strength.

4. Reduce ground feedback

Some of this gets back to the concept of grounding and stated neurological benefits with increased feedback from the environment around us. While there are good arguments for this that we may explore later, I’m more interested in the physical health impacts of footwear in this post. The main argument for thin soles and improving ground feedback is that, in order for your foot to truly move through its whole movement, it needs to be able to feel the ground better. 

This is a similar idea to working with gloves on. If you try to do certain tasks with gloves on it can be very difficult because you can’t feel what you’re doing as well. This can also be an issue with the feet. Mostly, walking doesn’t require as much detailed input, but some activities such as climbing or hiking may see a benefit from being able to feel the ground a little better. I know I prefer to take my shoes off to climb a tree and the only time I’ve fallen out of a tree I was wearing Chacos. 

One other point I would be fascinated to explore is the connection of ground feedback and footwear for individuals with diabetes. Diabetes often causes neuropathy, especially in the feet, which means you don’t receive as much feedback from your feet to begin with due to damaged nerves. But I digress…

How can barefoot shoes improve foot health?

Arguments for barefoot shoes are all about allowing your foot to do what it naturally would without the restriction of shoes. Over time, with use of barefoot shoes, most people see a restoration of their natural foot shape as well as increased foot, ankle, and calf strength, and a lot of people report improvement of foot and spine pain.

Restore natural foot shape

I found this individual’s photo of the changes of their toes over time fascinating. Scroll down the page a little and you’ll see a picture showing clear differences in foot shape over three different points in time.

Some may not care about the shape of their foot, but it’s simply a fact that bunions can be painful. So many people state issues with foot pain at various points in their life, whether because of sports, standing a lot for work, or just living life. Beyond the scientific evidence, the allegorical evidence is pretty strong for the reduction of pain with barefoot shoes. 

Also… I just don’t know how I feel knowing my feet probably don’t actually sit the way they should simply because of the shoes I’ve been wearing my whole life… Maybe that’s just me.

The amount of research I found stating that over 50% (the exact statistic varied by article and population studied, but pretty much all were over 50%) of individuals, both adult and child, wear shoes that don’t fit was astounding. One review of literature examining shoe size found repeatedly that individuals, especially women, wore shoes that were not only narrower than their feet, but also shorter than their feet.

This goes beyond what is optimal. This is not saying that individuals don’t give themselves enough room to move around in their shoes, which is also true. This is stating that individuals wear shoes that simply are smaller than their feet. Imagine how it feels to sit down and move around in pants that are way too tight and that you probably should have retired a long time ago. It stinkin’ hurts. It makes it so hard to move. Now imagine that for your feet, which are the foundation of movement. And here we find that many, many people are squeezing their feet into shoes that are too small and may not even realize it. 

I know I have had this issue in the past. When I was a young adult, I bought my shoes fitting so incredibly snugly. They didn’t fit. My feet sometimes hurt. But mostly I was used to it because that’s how I “liked” them. It took far too long for me to realize that it was causing issues and really wasn’t even comfortable. How do you miss that??? I don’t know, but I did. A lot of people do. 

Maybe your first step toward better foot health isn’t barefoot shoes but sizing up to an appropriate size. (Side note: if you have had a baby, you likely need to size up at least half a size from your pre-pregnancy shoe size. Not everyone needs this, but most do. Check your shoes and see if you don’t realize they don’t fit like they used to.) Give your toes some room to move. 

Besides the toe box, with the flexibility of barefoot shoes and the improvement in foot strength (which we will get into more in a moment), you should see an improvement in your natural arch and even possibly issues like overpronation or supination, though that would take a good amount of time of training yourself to walk within normal pronation limits without the use of supports.

This may help especially as you age reduce the amount of pain in your feet do to issues like hallux valgus, which may in turn allow you to walk and move longer.

Improve foot strength

As we touched on a little earlier, muscle strength and tendon/ligament mobility is use-it-or-lose-it. This is true for every single part of your body. As you age, your body also starts to have a harder time maintaining muscle definition and mobility. This is why so much research has emerged over the last couple decades urging older adults to stay active and to even weight train. This report provides a great overview of recommendations for older adults based on scientific evidence.

But even when you’re young, your activity will impact your strength and mobility. If you sit all day, your joints will become more stiff over time. If you never exercise, you will have no more muscle tone than is necessary for unloading the dishwasher or walking to the mailbox. So what does this have to do with your feet? Well, in case you didn’t know, your feet are not just bones and skin. Your feet are full of a complex system of muscles and ligaments that are impacted by your choice of footwear.

As we stated earlier, barefoot shoes have wide toe boxes, thinner, flat soles, and flexibility throughout. This means that your foot is mostly unsupported, as if you were walking barefoot (if that wasn’t obvious enough already). If supportive shoes reduce the need for your foot to do some of the work of walking, barefoot shoes place that load back on the foot. This means that muscles that weren’t having to work before, ligaments that weren’t having to stretch fully before, now have to. 

Because of this new load requirement, you see a significant increase in muscle strength, volume, and size, from changes as small as 9% (already a big change) to over 50% over a variety of timelines. Longer times naturally see more improvement, such as one study that saw a 57% improvement in muscle strength over 6 months of wearing barefoot shoes. 

One interesting point I saw mentioned was that use of barefoot shoes to correct foot pain and strength may be preferable to some as it’s more convenient than going to physical therapy. Just wear better footwear and the issue should improve on its own. 

3. Consideration of barefoot shoes for children

We’ve focused mostly on adults so far in this article, but the arguments for use of barefoot shoes for kids is a large part of the conversation. Kids’ feet go through a lot of changes even up to 18 years of age, so it’s important to properly support them, whatever that may look like. The basic concerns are very similar, but if you’re interested in learning more, check out my article on barefoot shoes for kids.

Other important notes

You should transition slowly to barefoot shoes

If you have not been lifting weights, the first time you go, you will likely be sore for days. Same thing if you run for the first time or even take a long walk when you’re typically sedentary. This is because your muscles and joints are not used to the load. They become sore. 

The same thing will happen to your feet if you go straight from wearing supportive tennis shoes all day to wearing barefoot shoes overnight. As we found out, your feet are made of muscles and ligaments. They get overworked just like any other part of your body receiving new stimulus. 

Everyone is going to have differing needs for transitioning to barefoot walking, whether you’re looking to go full-time barefoot or just sprinkle it in some. I am not a podiatrist and cannot offer medical advice. However, here is some unqualified advice on how to ease into barefoot shoes without destroying yourself.

If you constantly wear shoes, you’re going to want to take it extra slow. Wear barefoot shoes for a few hours while you go run errands or while you’re at work, then switch to more supportive footwear when you get home. If you walk around barefoot some of the day but wear supportive shoes quite a bit, maybe take a day on, day off approach. If you do a bit of barefooting and want to go full force, just ensure you give yourself some breaks a couple times a week in the beginning. In general, if you notice your feet are starting to hurt, give yourself some time off, just like you would if you went too hard at the squat machine one day.

You can dip into the barefoot world without going full-send

I am all about being barefoot. Most of the day (since I work from home) I am barefoot. I walk around outside barefoot. I am also transitioning to barefoot shoes for when I do need to wear them. I think it’s a great choice for my health and it’s just comfortable. 

However, I will still be wearing cute heels to weddings. I still have a short, slingback heel for when it’s just the right outfit choice. I will probably always be addicted to Birkenstocks, the shoes I have lived in 90% of the time for the last 10 years (they’re so comfy and easy!). 

Sometimes these trends have such a cult following that outsiders can feel like, “well I’m not going to give up all my shoes so that’s not for me.” But it doesn’t have to be like that. You can choose to make better choices more of the time without feeling like you have to go all in. I shouldn’t have to tell you that, but in case you need permission to dabble, here it is: dabble.

Athletics and barefoot shoes

This is one area of barefoot life that I have not personally been able to get fully behind. I’m not fully opposed to it, but I need to do more research and it just feels so extreme! I’ve been an athlete my entire life and there is a lot of emphasis on footwear depending on the sport. I have preferences for soccer cleats, everyday running shoes, cross country racing shoes, gym shoes, and even track spikes. That’s a harder habit to break for me than my everyday shoes. Something about giving up that extra support in those environments just feels so wrong. 

It’s not though. There are so many people who swear by embracing barefoot shoes for athletics. I know a ton of weight lifters are into barefoot style shoes (or even just slipping their shoes off) and I feel like that may be an easier transition. But hitting the pavement in barefoot shoes for a 10-mile run? That sounds like a beast. 

This is an area where you definitely want to acclimate yourself slowly if you are going to choose barefoot wear for athletics, especially high impact athletics like running, because of increased risk of feet injuries seen in individuals who go from supportive footwear straight to barefoot running. You have to be careful about upping your load even in conventional shoes, so if you’re not already used to barefoot wear in other areas, you are going to need to be even more slow in the transition for athletics. 

And if this isn’t for you, again, that’s okay. It may be a while for me before I try barefoot shoes for running. I may never try barefoot shoes for running. I don’t know yet. Running, specifically, is already so much work on the body and requires so much planning and thought to how you increase your training volume, that I’d be interested to explore more how barefoot shoes can work into that.

A good starting point is ensuring you choose a conventional shoe that has less cushion and is closer to a barefoot shoe than other options. I know the last time I researched running shoes I was very convinced by the arguments for avoiding shoes with extra support for everyday running, for the same reasons we’ve discussed here: you want to make sure your feet are getting strong enough with the rest of your legs to support the increased load. 

A note on selection

A big complaint for those who would otherwise be a little more into barefoot shoes is that they’re often ugly and expensive. While I will say this used to be true, it isn’t necessarily the case anymore. Luckily, as anything becomes more popular, there will be better selection and better competition to bring down prices. 

Bottom line though, barefoot shoes are a little different. The whole point is that they’re shaped differently and this is a departure from what we’re used to seeing and what many of us have grown to love. I know I’m not a huge fan of rounded toes for cute shoes like flats and heels. I also generally prefer a narrower look. Luckily, my feet are on the narrower side, but they’re not as narrow as conventional footwear. 

If you just cannot get behind barefoot shoes but you want to improve your foot health, try to focus on improving your choices within conventional footwear. Within what you can stand, try to avoid shoes that compress your toes, try to stick with flat shoes most of the time, and try to avoid shoes that have no flexibility. There’s always a middleground you can find.

Summary / TLDR

Barefoot shoes are all about supporting the natural form and function of both your feet and spine. This is accomplished by allowing your foot to remain in its neutral, natural position as if barefoot on the ground, while still protecting it from environmental hazards. 

There is decent evidence that foot shape and strength is majorly impacted by choice of footwear and that conventional footwear is not the best option for supporting natural foot shape and optimal foot strength. This is because conventional footwear restricts the movement of the foot while also reducing the need for the feet to do the work of walking, resulting in weaker intrinsic foot muscles and ligaments. Keep in mind, there are certain populations that barefoot wear is not appropriate for. Additionally, those who are used to very supportive shoes should transition slowly to barefoot shoes as well as avoid activities like running barefoot until they’re acclimated.

This may be particularly important for children whose feet are constantly developing and highly affected by choice of footwear. In fact, a lot of podiatrists recommend minimal to no footwear whenever possible for early walkers to allow their feet freedom to move and develop strength as they start walking. 

Are barefoot shoes necessary? I wouldn’t say necessary exactly. You’re not going to see higher mortality rates or increase in rates of cancer from people who wear conventional shoes. Are they potentially helpful? Absolutely! Especially when we think about quality of life. If you can improve the health and strength of your feet, they’re likely to take you much farther as you deal with the struggles of aging.

Personally, it’s worth the switch to make sure I’m walking around playing with my future grandbabies for as long as I possibly can.

If you’re interested in experiencing the benefits of barefoot walking, make sure you take the transition slow to ensure your feet have time to build up the strength they need to support themselves. If you need help finding quality barefoot shoes that look good, go look at my list of affordable and stylish options that your feet will love. 

I hope you found this content helpful! If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to shoot me an email. If you would like to receive more of this content, stay tuned for future posts and join our newsletter. I currently send monthly newsletters with the most recent posts as well as news and updates on all things holistic health and natural wellness.