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By Camille Smith

When Dr. Daniel Howell, author of “The Barefoot Book, 50 Great Reasons to Kick Off Your Shoes,” walked into Starbucks to share his knowledge on barefoot living he was, of course, barefoot. Like a true barefoot living advocate, he did not even look to see who noticed his wet feet coming into the coffee house out of the rain. It is this acceptance of walking barefoot in public that Howell hopes to see become the norm.

Though Howell has lived the majority of his life barefoot, he did not begin research into the subject until around 2003 as a result of a few factors. First, he began teaching at Liberty University and a dress code required him to wear closed toe shoes and socks. This requirement resulted in him going barefoot when not working to give his feet a break from the enclosed space. Around the same time, Howell also decided to get back into running, though at first it never dawned on him to run barefoot.

“I got a good pair of running shoes and began running on the Blackwater Creek trails and on Liberty Mountain and I was twisting and spraining my ankles,” he said. “I immediately traced that to my running shoes and gave barefoot running a try. I loved it. I have now been running barefoot for around four years and I have never had an injury.”

When Liberty’s dress code relaxed in 2006, Howell was happy to wear his sandals to class though he often kicked them off and taught barefoot. At that point, he was running and hiking barefoot, teaching barefoot and rarely wore shoes in his leisure time.

“Students mostly began asking me about my barefoot habits and I started doing research so I could give them good answers. I wanted to know more about it myself, too,” Howell said. “The more I looked into it, the more I discovered that shoes are unnatural and harmful really.”

Howell’s research shows that shoes dramatically change the way people stand, run and walk, causing the majority of common foot problems. Howell says the benefits of not wearing shoes is simply about avoiding all of these problems.

“Sixty million Americans see a podiatrist each year and 95 percent of problems are shoe induced,” he said. “Everything from athlete’s foot to toe nail fungus, bunions, blisters, corns, flat foot, fallen arches, Achilles’ tendonitis and literally almost every foot problem you can think of can be traced back to shoes.”

There are over 100-thousand nerve endings in each foot and the brain is constantly receiving information from them to make adjustments in each step to protect the feet and the rest of the body. Howell uses the breakdown of a typical running shoe to show how a shoe can block that protection process and cause damage.

“A traditional running shoe has a large thick sole that is an inch thick. Next, there is an insole and then you might have air that is between you and the ground and then your sock,” he explained. “All of these things render your foot deaf and blind and your brain can’t make the adjustments to protect your joints.”

Howell’s research shows that if you measure the impact forced on the knees and hips while running, it is significantly higher than in those going barefoot. Those layers of the shoe, created to absorb the impact, only transfer it without minimizing the effect on your body.

“We have no clue because those nerve endings aren’t in your knees and your hips, they are in your feet and your feet can’t feel anything through your shoes,” he said.

In addition to the nerve endings in the foot for protection, the feet, hands and scalp are the most important for body temperature regulation. These parts of the body are very vascular, meaning they have a lot of blood supply and radiate heat to regulate the temperature, and are another function of the feet to protect the body.

“Shoes are not created for thermoregulation; it is a heat trapper,” Howell said. “The shoe is a dark, warm, stale and wet environment. It is an incubator that is growing unhealthy foot fungus.”

For Howell, walking, hiking and running barefoot is essential to healthy feet and he urges adults and children alike to kick off their shoes and leave their feet exposed to air and sunlight. Unfortunately, he says that Americans have been ingrained since childhood that shoes are required and a necessity.

It’s true that our culture has a shoe for every occasion–athletic shoes for running and jogging, high heeled shoes for special occasions, flip flops for summer and even shoes to wear in water. Howell, however, recommends going barefoot 95 percent of the time, looking at shoes as a tool as opposed to a necessity and using them only in extreme conditions.

“Proposing a barefoot lifestyle is a fairly radical proposal but our feet were made for endurance,” Howell said. “If everybody was barefoot, it wouldn’t be an issue.”

While most people see not wearing shoes in public as being taboo, Howell would like to see a reversal in this belief. He points out that there are no health codes that prevent patrons from going barefoot in restaurants and stores and that it is perfectly legal to drive shoeless as well.

Living this barefoot lifestyle is not an experiment for Howell, but rather a state of being–one he would like to see embraced by the broader population.

“When it comes down to it, wearing shoes is unnatural,” he said. “In the last year, the Podiatry world has embraced the concept of going barefoot and I would love to see them endorse it.”