Drop Dead Healthy by A. J. Jacobs

Author:A. J. Jacobs
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Published: 2012-04-10T06:00:00+00:00

The Appropriately Named Foot Doctor

A couple of weeks later, I ended up in the office of Dr. Krista Archer. Dr. Archer is a respected foot surgeon in New York with shoulder-length blond hair. She often appears on morning TV to talk about, say, how to minimize damage from stiletto heels.

I’d come to see her for some advice on how to have the healthiest feet, and also to get her take on the great barefoot debate.

Should I exercise without shoes?

“I’m not an advocate,” she says.

She explains: If you have no foot problems, if your feet are models of biomechanical perfection, going shoeless might be fine. But if you have any quirks, if, for instance, your foot rolls inward or outward too much, then put on the sneakers.

“Running puts a huge load on the feet—three times the body weight on the front foot.”

But isn’t the foot designed to run barefoot? “That doesn’t mean it’s the best way to do it,” Dr. Archer says. “We used to use dial-up modems. Should we stick with them? If you’re nearsighted, should you avoid glasses because they’re not ‘natural’?”

In fact, she suggests that I buy a foam insert for my sneakers. As McDougall said, I do land too hard on my heels.

I’ll return to Dr. Archer in a moment, but let me say this. After talking to other doctors and reading everything I could on the topic, I can confidently say: The jury’s still out on the barefoot movement. It shouldn’t be dismissed as a wackadoodle fad. It does make some logical sense. But on the other hand, it probably shouldn’t be adopted by everyone. Medicine is increasingly personal, and the feet are no exception. It’s something to try. Nowadays, I take about a quarter of my runs sans shoes.

Back in Dr. Archer’s office, I slip off my shoes and socks for my exam.

She looks at my heels, which are covered in thick, callused skin. They have cracks big enough to fit dimes, maybe nickels.

Her diagnosis: “Ouchy.”

I’m going to need to add another task to my enormous list of daily commandments: exfoliating my heels in the shower. I tell her she should have seen my feet a week ago. Julie just took me to my first pedicure as part of Project Health, and the Korean woman spent five minutes polishing my heel.

“Did you like the pedicure?” she asked.

“Not really,” I say. The whole woman-kneeling-at-your-feet dynamic made me feel too much like a viceroy of a British colony.

“You have to be careful with pedicures,” she says.

Dr. Archer lists all the horrible problems that pedicures can unleash. When you get a pedicure, she tells me, you are submerging your feet in a swamp of germs. The jets in the footbath are clogged with bits of skin from previous clients.

“People get fungus all the time from pedicures,” she says.

If I ever go again, she says, I should bring my own nail file, clippers, and buffers. In fact, Archer is releasing an antifungal treatment—it’s made from tea tree oil—that I could apply to my toes pre- and post-pedicure.

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