← Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee
Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee
How To Heal Your Body, Improve Balance & Move Better At Any Age (The New Science of Foot Health) with Jim Dooner #502
02:00:06
Did you know that the health of your feet impacts your entire body? Or that the shoes you wear daily could be contributing to more widespread pain—from your ankles to your back and beyond?
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- [00:01]
Jim Dooner
The movement of our feet affects everything else up the chain and so dysfunction at the feet can not only cause pain and issues at the feet, but everywhere else in the body.
- [00:11]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast, Feel Better Live More. Did you know that the health of your feet can impact your entire body? Or that the shoes you wear daily could potentially be contributing to all kinds of issues, from your ankles to your back and beyond? Well, today's guest on my podcast is Jim Dooner, the head physiotherapist for the Foot Collective, a global community of health and movement practitioners on a mission to make a much needed shift in the culture around feet and footwear. Through their online training resources, social media platforms, in person workshops, and using a range of physical training tools such as the Soulmate, which I am really enjoying using, they aim to help people restore their natural foot function and balance and at the same time make this process engaging and fun. In our conversation, Jim explains the fascinating mismatch between how our feet evolved and how we treat them today. He also introduces the concept of movement nutrition, the idea that our feet, like our bodies, require proper nourishment, and why so many of us these days are malnourished. In this regard, we also explore the key things to look out for in our footwear, how conditions like plantar fasciitis, bunions and chronic pain often stem from poor foot function, the importance of balance training and play, and how fashion and societal norms have shaped our relationship with our feet, often at the expense of our well being. Jim is a delightfully optimistic human being who genuinely wants to help people live and move better by focusing on their feet. So if you've ever questioned why we accept foot pain as normal, or wondered whether your shoes might be affecting more than just your feet, this conversation offers a profound shift in perspective. Please note in this conversation two scientific terms come up that I did not get a chance to fully explain. Pronation and Supination Very simply pronounce pronation and supination are normal joint actions that occur in your feet. Pronation refers to the natural inward movement of the foot, basically when your foot arches lower, while supination refers to the natural outward movement of the foot when your foot arches lift. And now, without further ado, here it is. My conversation with Jim Duna. So many people these days are struggling with pain. Foot pain, back pain, hip pain, all kinds of pain. What is the relationship between the health of our feet and the pain we might be experiencing over the rest of our body.
- [03:32]
Jim Dooner
Yeah. So it's very true. And it's no, it's no secret that there is a. Basically an epidemic. It's not technically the right word, but an epidemic of pain and dysfunction in our society. And the feet do play a massive role. But I usually like to start a bit broader and just look at the overall mismatch between what our bodies receive in our. In our modern environment compared to what they sort of expect to receive in a natural environment, which is where we did the bulk of our evolution. And I think I first heard about the mismatch hypothesis from Daniel Lieberman. He wrote a book called Story of the Human Body. And basically our modern environment has all of these inputs that are completely different to what we receive in nature. So there's the artificial light. Obviously artificial light plays a big role in how our circadian rhythms work and can disrupt that. There's the way that we perceive and manage stress in modern times. There's obviously the food system and what we eat, ultra processed food. And movement is another thing that is very different. We move very differently in today's environment compared to how we moved for the bulk of our evolution. And one of my favorite analogies when it comes to movement is something that I heard from Katie Bowman originally, who wrote a book called Move youe DNA and. And that was really paradigm shifting for me because she talked about movement being like nutrition for our bodies. And her whole brand is nutritious movement. And it's such a powerful analogy. It's sort of an analogy, but it is literally true in the sense that movement and loads are converted to biochemical processes in the cell through a process called mechanotransduction. So mechanical forces, external or internal, then create changes in our physiology of our cells and therefore our tissues and organs and so on. And the most obvious example of that is like muscles and bones, where if you go on bed rest for a period of time, then your bone mineral density and your muscle mass will decrease regardless of how much food you're taking in, whether how much minerals you're eating. Calcium, protein doesn't really matter because the nutrient for the muscles and the bones was the movement or is the movement that you apply to it. And so most people these days essentially starved or malnourished when it comes to movement. They're not getting enough quantity, quality or variety of movement nutrients. And the feet are probably the most malnourished. And they're also the most misunderstood, mistreated part of our bodies. I think. And that's a cultural issue, which is. It's very interesting about how that came about, but. But they're the most malnourished part of our bodies because we wrap them in clothes, essentially, which are shoes, like footwear, which disrupts their natural movement. So it squishes them together. It changes the position of the ankle with a heel. There's all these qualities of modern footwear that actually completely disrupt the foot's natural function. And because our feet are our foundation for movement. And, you know, as bipedal animals, we're on our feet most of the time, unless we're sitting down, which is also an issue, the movement of our feet affects everything else up the chain. And so dysfunction at the feet can not only cause pain and issues at the feet, but everywhere else in the body.
- [07:04]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. I think that last point is so key, and it really relates to this big picture perspective that you're painting here, right at the top. I think a lot of people are aware now of this mismatch between the way we are living now and the way we have evolved to live. And you can talk about that through the lens of nutrition, movement, sleep, stress, whatever it might be, that there is this mismatch. And from that mismatch, the foundation for all kinds of problems, whether it be physical diseases, autoimmune diseases, all kinds of different things, but also pain. It comes on the back of this mismatch. Right now, what's really interesting is that most people, I think, who listen to this podcast are probably aware that movement is really important for the body. So they're trying to think about when I need to get to the gym, right. I need to move my body when I need to try and go for walks more, which, again, is all great, but very few people are thinking about the health of their feet when they're doing that. They're not thinking about, well, what footwear am I wearing? Because if you actually take a step back, like you've just said, and I'm biased in the sense that I've been in, you know, I've been exclusively wearing barefoot shoes now for, I think it's 11 years, maybe it's almost 12 now. When I look at normal footwear or I see a male dress shoe or a female high heel, it's pretty brutal what a lot of footwear is doing to your feet, right?
- [08:43]
Jim Dooner
It is, yeah. And that is the thing where people who are active these days, you know, whether they walk and run or go to the gym or play a sport, even if they're Active, and they exercise often their feet are very sedentary. So when it comes to movement, nutrition, there's like. Katie Bowman talks about macronutrients and micronutrients. So your macronutrients, your. You're walking, you're running, your big body movements, basically, and your micronutrients are the movement of each joint, the movement of your big toe. And usually in nature, the movement of our big toe, to use an example, is heavily tied to when we walk. So when we walk, we're naturally moving our big toe, but if we're wearing a shoe that stops that big toe movement or cramps it in, then you don't get as much of that micronutrient. And so with. With nutrition, let's say you're getting heaps of food, but you're deficient in vitamin C over a long period of time, that ends up with scurvy. Right. So it's the same kind of thing where people are suffering with the symptoms of nutrient deficiencies when it comes to movement, and they're not realizing that they're starving their feet of movement by putting them in these shoes that. Yeah. Frankly, it does seem crazy that those shoes exist, but it actually does make sense when you look at the history of feet and footwear as well.
- [10:08]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. This summer, I spent a few weeks in Kenya with my family, and we had a wonderful time. And for a few days, when we were near the Maasai Mara Game Park, I was interacting with a lot of people from the Masai tribe. And, you know, one day we went out to the Maasai where they're, you know, in a mobile camp where they had set up, and there was something about their posture. I mean, the men, they just. They. They stood so straight, so warrior. Like, I know, you know that there is a term Masai warrior. Right. But it was really quite remarkable how all the men in that tribe that I saw had a really commanding posture. Their feet look strong. A big thing that they do is they do a lot of jumping.
- [10:59]
Jim Dooner
I've seen it.
- [11:00]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And I'm sure footwear and foot health plays a role there.
- [11:05]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, well, in a natural environment, you can't afford to have dysfunctional feet. So your foot health is very much tied to the performance of your feet. And it's not just about not having pain in your feet, which is sort of the one end of the spectrum of dysfunction, but it's about performing really well. So I've seen them jump, and it is incredible how high they get, and they just go over and over again. It's like they're bouncing on a trampoline, but it's just using their internal springs in their feet and ankles. And yeah, in a natural environment they are from birth, they're barefoot or in very minimalist footwear. And they are constantly exploring natural environments, challenging their balance, running, walking, squatting, you know, lifting, playing. And they don't have the opportunity to starve themselves of movement. And therefore their feet and their bodies look very vital and strong and healthy and happy. And so it's interesting when you look at, like I mentioned before, the history of feet and footwear, when you trace it back to millions of years ago. I think it's six or seven millions of years ago that the first signs of bipedalism started happening in early tree dwelling apes. Basically environment changed. They came down from the trees and obviously their feet were basically hands, right? They had opposable thumbs to grip branches and all of that. And over millions of years, which is kind of hard to imagine the scale of millions of years, but they adapted to walking on two feet, two legs, and the structure of the feet changed to be perfect, perfectly adapted to that again over millions of years, until I think 2 million years ago, there was much more modern feet, Homo erectus, Homo habilis. And then from there to 200,000 years ago is when Homo sapiens are sort of said to like modern humans, which is us have said to be around. And we have adapted to be the most efficient bipedal animals that allowed us to hunt, it allowed us to spread all over the world. And going all over the world, we had lots of different environments to traverse, different temperatures. So it kind of makes sense that as our brains got bigger and we started using more technology, using more tools, then we started creating technology and people. When people think of technology, they think, you know, computers and phones and things like that. But footwear is a technology, fire is a technology. There's a lot of primitive technologies that sort of set the scene for our expansion as humans. And the footwear is actually quite a cool invention, right? Like if you need to protect your feet from the environment, it makes sense to have a layer of protection, but you don't want to be protecting at the expense of the function. So for the first thousands, thousands of years of footwear is just sort of leather moccasins, plant based fiber sandals, things like that. And as we congregated into bigger and bigger, I guess, tribes and societies and civilizations, there was stronger social hierarchies. And footwear evolved to be a sign of status and wealth. So the nobility of certain cultures like the Egyptians. And you know, even on from the Egyptians through to the medieval period, the narrowness of your footwear was actually heavily tied to how much wealth and status you had, because it was a strong sign that you didn't actually have to be out there doing any labor. So wide feet were a sign of basically being poor or a slave, and narrow feet were a sign of wealth and nobility and therefore everyone wanted to be like the nobles. Eventually the fashion, which is like a proxy for wealth and status eventually trickles down through the social classes. And essentially modern footwear has this cultural carryover from the perception of footwear and especially narrow heeled, pointy footwear being. Yeah. Fashionable and a sign of wealth.
- [15:28]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. It's fascinating with all these things, when you actually go back in time and go, where did this actually come from? At what point did we start to see footwear as fashion as opposed to health promoting technology? But let's really make the case for people in terms of foot health and pain. Right. You said something earlier on that the health of your foot doesn't just influence your foot. If your feet are dysfunctional, and I would argue most people in Western society's feet are now dysfunctional, that could be behind your knee pain, behind your hip pain, behind your shoulder pain, ribs, neck, it can all go up and. Yeah. Can you speak to that a little bit? Cause I think people still aren't quite making that connection.
- [16:22]
Jim Dooner
For sure. Yeah. So it's worth just noting that pain is always multifactorial, for sure. There's, you know, the biopsychosocial model of pain, which I've fully subscribed by and makes perfect sense to me.
- [16:33]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And can you say what that is actually for people who don't understand that term?
- [16:36]
Jim Dooner
Sure, yeah. So biopsychosocial is basically talking about. It's originally applied to health but also applies to pain. So there's biological factors that can come into your experience of pain. So obviously that would be like, if you cut your arm, that's a biological structural damage that would contribute to pain. Obviously there's psychological components, so your beliefs around pain or health or just general cultural beliefs, and that also plays into social aspects. So all of these areas of health can apply to your experience of pain or will it influence your experience of pain? And this generally applies mostly to chronic pain or persistent pain. You know, if you've just done, if you've just sprained your ankle, it might, might not be because you're really stressed at work, but if your ankle still hurts 10 years later, and there's no biological structural thing wrong in the ankle, then it is very potentially affected by other factors, for sure. That being said, chronic pain can also be perpetuated by our mechanical environment as well, which is, you know, biomechanical, structural. And so if you think about feet, they're our conduit with the ground. So we're not walking on our hands, we're not walking on four limbs. We can. But in general, everyone is walking around on their two feet. And so their job is to absorb impact forces from the ground. So when we walk, when we walk along the ground, we put force into the ground, and then there's something called ground reaction force that comes back from the ground. So Newton's law, every action has an equal opposite reaction. So that's ground reaction force that our feet have to deal with, have to absorb and distribute through changing their shape, and then they have to propel force into the ground to go forward. Right. So the same thing goes for running, jumping, etc. And if they're not doing that job well, if they're not changing shape well, if they're not absorbing that force or propelling well, then the rest of the body has to work harder to pick up the slack. So if you're on a soccer team and one player is completely not doing their job, then every other player has to work harder to make up for that, to compensate. So our body is a master compensator. We've adapted over millions of years to compensate to a lot of different environments and tasks and challenges. But compensation often tends to come at a cost. And if our knee or hip or back is dealing with all of the forces that the foot isn't dealing with, then that can be. That can definitely contribute to overload in those areas, especially if those areas are also lacking capacity, based on, like I said, the lack of overall movement, nutrition that they get from our modern lifestyle.
- [19:38]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
You trained as a physiotherapist. When did all these principles and these concepts start to land for you? Was it in your training or was it something else?
- [19:56]
Jim Dooner
So I did originally get into barefoot shoes or natural footwear in. Yeah, in uni. I think I was third year in my physio schooling.
- [20:06]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
You are a qualified physiotherapist?
- [20:07]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I got a lot of laughs because I was wearing the Vibram toe shoes in, you know, in a cohort of students and, you know, professors who were teaching and learning about the function of the human body. And these shoes that look like feet get a lot of LAUGHS which is kind of interesting to think about, isn't it?
- [20:29]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Just.
- [20:29]
Jim Dooner
And anyway, I didn't really take it any further. I just sort of wore those shoes. I was like, this makes sense to me. I'm going to keep wearing these. And I eventually got some other shoes that weren't toe shoes. But now I'm back in the toe shoes, primarily in a lot of ways, in a lot of my activities. And it wasn't until I was working actually with chronic back pain rehab, when I was doing functional movement programs for people with back pain. And I happened to find out about the foot collective, Instagram, Nick in Canada, who started it, who you've had on the podcast before. And I started watching what he was doing, and it sort of reminded me of, oh, yeah, the feet are the foundation of our bodies. And I'm teaching a lot of these people how to do fundamental human movements. Hinging, squatting, lifting, things like that, and seeing a lot of good results in a lot of ways. But I'm also seeing them wobble around on these really thick cushioned shoes. So most of these people have been in pain for 10, 20 years, and they're at the point where they've gone to see a neurosurgeon, and he's recommended these programs, which is really great. It's getting them active, it's getting them moving. And, you know, I was very impressed with this surgeon who was trying to help them avoid surgery. But I was watching these people move around and try to learn these movements on a shaky foundation, and something just clicked for me, and I started asking them to take their shoes off when we were learning these movements, and instantly I saw them have a much better connection with the ground and therefore have a much easier time learning these movements. And that was a big click for me. The other big click was balancing on the beams that Nick was showing a lot on Instagram. And that's probably a whole nother story in itself, but it. It was. It made a lot of sense. And I'm. I'm not someone who thinks the feet are the one magical key to solving every type of pain, but it's certainly the case that most people's feet are dysfunctional simply because of the culture of wearing shoes that disrupt foot function from a very young age and then not having a solid foundation to work from.
- [22:46]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, I mean, just so bouncing off what you just said, I qualified for Medino Medical school back in 2001. So I've been a medical doctor for a long, long time now, and I'm very clear in my view, that you don't know how many of your symptoms could be improved and potentially vanish until you sort out your nutrition, your movement, your sleep and your stress. So I've always, as a, as a doctor, felt very frustrated when we're playing downstream with symptoms, which is often what we do. You know, often the medications are there to alleviate a downstream symptom. But unless you're helping someone get to the root cause or go higher up the chain, almost inevitably they will be back, they will be dissatisfied or they'll have to keep taking medications. Right. And I very much see foot health in the same way. You don't know how much of your pain could be related to the health of your feet. Until you start improving the health of your feet with maybe, you know, you at the foot collective, you have this great program, you're just taking me through all these exercises in the garden. Amazing. We're going to talk about that because they're very, very simple, cheap and accessible for people to do. But of course there's also, you know, what shoes are you spending most of your life in? Are they foot shaped shoes which help your feet function or, or are they getting in the way of that function? So, you know, that's how I see it. I'm always like, guys, you don't know what your, what symptoms will go away until you move here. So I would say I think I bought my first pair of vivo barefoot shoes. I think it was in, it might be November 2010 or 2011. I'd be wearing them since then. And my back pain was of course, multifactorial. There were physical, structural factors, there were emotional factors, you know, that all played in. But there's no question that moving to barefoot shoes made a massive, massive difference. And I have been recommending them to patients for many, many years and I've seen all kinds of things get better. Like, and it's. Is a doctor, you're not taught this. I remember plantar fasciitis used to be one of the most frustrating things that would come in because people are in pain back. This is years ago. We're trying to give painkillers, maybe refer to podiatrists, maybe orthotics, but I very, very rarely saw effective resolution. And then we'd be referring them for cortisone shots and then a steroid. So if you just take a step back and go, hold on a minute. So there is pain that's causing someone a lot of problems in their life. They want relief. I get that. So let's help them get relief. But I think we have to ask ourselves a question before we actually are shoving a needle into someone's body with steroids. Like, have we explored all options first? And I believe that there are many other ways to tackle plantar fasciitis effectively. I'm guessing you've seen this a lot, so maybe some comments on what I've just said. But also, let's talk about plantar fasciitis, which is really, really common. This episode is brought to you by Airbnb. Now. My family and I just love using Airbnb. We often book an Airbnb for our family holidays, and I also stay in Airbnbs often when I'm traveling for work. I love the convenience and the fact that I can have my own kitchen wherever I go, which makes it so much easier for me to stick to my routine and eat healthily in the way that I like. Now, with Christmas and the holidays appearing on the horizon, I've been wondering, are you planning to be away maybe a few days out of town or even a bigger trip abroad? Well, if you are, I know that many of you are probably thinking about staying in an Airbnb, but have you ever considered hosting your own home or perhaps even just a room in your home on Airbnb? 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- [29:33]
Jim Dooner
I think it's good to emphasize the difference between disease care and healthcare. And I think most of the traditional healthcare world is actually disease care, as in they are treating or managing the symptoms of disease without, like you said, without necessarily exploring the root causes of.
- [29:53]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
The disease, which may have its place as well.
- [29:55]
Jim Dooner
Absolutely. And so the disease care is really, really important and especially when it comes to like emergencies. But people do naturally want to manage pain and symptoms because they're very disruptive to their life. But if the disease care isn't being used to facilitate more health care, which is more active. So you can think of disease care as generally being passive things done to people to manage pain and symptoms, and healthcare as being active, where it's things done by someone to improve their function. And so the disease care, as long as it's used to facilitate more health care, more active, empowering approaches, and that goes for any pain or disease, then it's, it can be great and it can be really, really helpful. But if it's like you said, if it's only used without addressing the function and active, empowering approach, then it tends to keep people in a cycle, a negative cycle that takes them down a road that is harder and harder to get back from. But when it comes to foot conditions as well. So plantar fasciitis is a very, very common one, the most common cause of plantar heel pain and one of the most common foot conditions, bunions, Morton's neuroma. We get questions about this all the time.
- [31:08]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Let's talk about them.
- [31:08]
Jim Dooner
Yeah. And so it's interesting because I actually create a lot of videos, a lot of routines, a lot of educational resources that are for our YouTube channel and our website that are about how to address this condition, how to address that condition. And most of it is the same because a lot of it just comes down to the feet not functioning. You're not getting the natural inputs to the feet. And everyone is suffering in various ways based on their genetic predispositions, suffering as a result of that lack of natural foot function. And so when you restore natural foot function over time through various exercises and like you said, switching to or transitioning to natural footwear or barefoot shoes, then most symptoms tend to just go away because you're addressing those sort of root causes. As always, there's some other factors. Sleep, stress, nutrition, community, all that makes a difference as well, especially in those persistent pain conditions. But the simple act of gradually restoring foot function, gradually spending more time barefoot and using pain as your guide. So there's. It's always possible to do too much too soon. But if you look at natural foot function, the first thing we look at is toe splay. So this is something people can do at home, is look down at your feet and, well, obviously why you're barefoot and see if there's spaces between your toes and see if your big toes point straight or if they point in towards the other toes. And then see if you can actively splay out your toes. Most people will find that pretty challenging just because of the shoes that they've been wearing have been cramping their toes for a long time. So that toe splay makes a. Is plays a huge role in our balance and our arch control. And the extension of our toes is also plays a big role through movement. So we like to check in with how is the big toe extending? And it's. A lot of people just think about the big toe as this really small body part, but it's actually very significant because if that can't extend, then you have to completely change the way you walk in order to move across an environment. And having a look at how the mid foot moves. So does the foot change shape, pronation, supination? A lot of people have been told that they're pronators and that they have pronation in their feet. And we have to avoid that pronation, or that's at least what they've taken from it. A lot of the people that come to us tell us about how much they pronate. And pronation is actually a very natural and important movement of the foot, as is supination. The main problems come when you can't get out of pronation.
- [33:52]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
You're stuck in pronation.
- [33:53]
Jim Dooner
Yeah. Or if you're stuck in supination. So neither is good. There's people with high arch profiles that can't pronate rather, and they have issues with shock absorption on the ground. And likewise people who are stuck in pronation and can't actively supinate, have issues with force, propulsion. So it's just different issues, but they show up in different ways.
- [34:12]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
I think that's a great. A great example. Just to explore this a little bit more, because many people will have gone to, let's say, a running shop and be told that they're pronators. So they need a shoe that supports that. Right. So if you have a flat foot, the running shot may say to you, okay, well, we need something with an arch in it now to give you that support. Which you can see why they would give that advice. But the problem is that's not teaching your foot how to move in and out pronation, is it? It's saying, oh, you have this problem, it's a fixed problem that actually we're now going to give you a fixed arch, let's say, to support stability. Now, I'd love your perspective on that or whether you think that's a good thing or not. But the point I guess I'm trying to make here is that buying that shoe, it's not going to restore that function of that foot. It's not going to go, oh, actually, yeah, you're actually stuck in pronation. Maybe you don't need a running shoe that supports that. Maybe you need to do some foot exercises that help you now restore that natural function so you can get out of that pronation as and when you need to. What's your perspective on that?
- [35:29]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, so it's important to differentiate between a flexible flat foot and a rigid flat foot.
- [35:35]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay.
- [35:35]
Jim Dooner
Rigid flat feet are very rare, but those are the kind of feet that may require some external assistance from orthotics and footwear, because if they truly can't get out of pronation, then that is going to be a problem. Or it can. It can manifest with problems. It really depends on their symptoms as well. Like, some people do get around fine, but a flexible, flat foot looks flat, and it's sort of. You're standing there and it looks like it's flat on the ground, but it does actually change shape when you move your hips or when you move your toes. And so that's a sign that it can be trained with exercises. So the context here is that if someone has a really painful foot condition, they're struggling to get around in their day, and the support from external support, like footwear and orthotic, helps them get through their day and helps them manage their symptoms and manage the loads, then that can be a really helpful tool. But it should be done in tandem with exercises and interventions that helps restore that function, because otherwise they'll end up dependent on the tool forever. Right. Because like you said, a shoe or an orthotic will never teach the body how to function in a natural way. It will just tend to cover up the symptoms of that lack of function. And so I think there's a role for those external supports definitely in certain contexts, but I think they're over prescribed and they're over prescribed without the education and the guidance on how to move away from that support.
- [37:10]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. So it's not saying either approach is necessarily good or bad. It's going, when do we need this particular approach and when do we need that one.
- [37:19]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, exactly. And all of these things are tools. Right. Footwear is a tool, orthotics a tool. And it's not necessarily about the tool itself. It's about the education and the story that comes with the tool that then drives someone's beliefs. So if you go into a shoe shop and you're told that you're a pronator, you've got flat feet, and that that's a, you know, maybe you haven't been assessed properly and told whether it's a rigid or a flexible. It's very likely that it's a flexible flat foot or that you just have a low arch profile. If you haven't been told that that is actually not an inherent cause of issues and that it can be trained and improved, then you just think that you're genetically flawed and that you have to just be in shoes for the rest of your life or in orthotics or whatever support it is for the rest of your life. And those beliefs drive your behaviors. And so if you believe you're genetically flawed, there's no point doing exercises because, well, that's just how my feet are. And those behaviors kind of drive your experience as well. So then when you take your shoes off and you go for a walk on the beach, you're like, oh, my feet hurt. Oh, that's right. I'm genetically flawed and I can't go without shoes. And it just ends up in this cycle of dependence, which is always possible to get out of. But it does get harder and harder.
- [38:37]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
The longer it's like I've covered in relation to back pain. Very recently we spoke to Professor Peter O'Sullivan. He's a physiotherapist world expert in back pain and this multifactorial nature to chronic back pain and chronic pain full. But this whole idea that we sometimes will scan a back and say, oh, you've got a bulging disc, L4, L5, you know, and then. So the patient believes, oh, yeah, of course, I've got back pain and it reinforces it. And next time that they do something or go in a long drive. Yeah, you know, I've got a. Yeah, I had that scan. Well, I think well over 50% of people at different age ranges will have a disc bulge on their scan and have no pain.
- [39:15]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, Right.
- [39:15]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So just cause you got a bulge on your scan doesn't mean that that's the cause of your pain. And I guess, you know, you're kind of painting a similar picture here. Right?
- [39:24]
Jim Dooner
Very similar. And that has been one of the major paradigm shifts in the physiotherapy world and the healthcare world. It's still taking time to disseminate across the whole, you know, healthcare industry, I suppose. But certainly with feet, great examples are the ones I've talked about, bunions, Morton's neuroma. Those conditions aren't actually necessarily associated with pain. Let's go with bunions. So there's a severity scale of bunions where it's mild, moderate, severe, and the severity of the angle of the bunion doesn't actually correlate with the amount of pain. And so if you, you know, if someone's got. They could have a very mild bunion and have a lot of pain and disability, or they could have a very severe bunion and not have any pain or perceived disability, necessarily. The function of the feet is obviously better when the big toe is straight. But a lot of people. There's actually a study that came out that showed one of the best interventions for bunions is that education letting them know that their bunion doesn't necessarily mean they have to be in pain.
- [40:27]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So nothing to do with any exercise or anything, just the knowledge that your bunion doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have pain. That's freeing and empowering and shows the power of psychology. Right. The power of the minds and our beliefs.
- [40:40]
Jim Dooner
Yeah. And that ties into the biopsychosocial approach. And the same kind of thing goes for back pain. There's been lots of studies around that. And it's not to say that pain is just all in the mind and you just have to talk people out of it. But it is very helpful to understand your condition and know that it's doesn't. It's not a life sentence of pain and dysfunction if you have a certain structural change in your body. So Morton's neuroma is another really Great example of something that people have been told for years is irreversible.
- [41:12]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Could you explain for people who've never heard of that, what it is?
- [41:15]
Jim Dooner
Yeah. So Morton's neuroma is basically a thickening of the tissue around the interdigital nerve, which is the nerve that runs between your metatarsal head, so the bony knuckles on your toes before the actual toes. And so there's a nerve that runs through each of those spaces between the knuckles. And when our feet get cramped in shoes, and also, depending on the biomechanics of our walking and our ankle and things like that, that area can get overloaded. There can be thickening around the nerve and then irritation. And that thickening, which is the OMA and the neuroma, can't be reversed without surgery. Right. You can't actually get rid of that thickening without surgery. And therefore people have been told, oh, it's irreversible. But people don't really care about the thickening if their pain and dysfunction is gone. They just care about the pain and dysfunction. And so we heard countless people report to us that they just through doing the exercises, changing their footwear and improving their mechanics, they've gotten out of pain. Who cares about whether there's thickening there or not? They are able to improve without changing the structure of their body. And that shows up time and time again in all of the research around persistent pain that this structure, yes, it's important to take into account, but it's not the only factor that matters. And often it matters less than what we think.
- [42:41]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
If someone is not in pain, foot pain, hip pain, back pain, whatever, how do they know whether their feet are functioning well or not?
- [42:53]
Jim Dooner
That's a good point. I'm glad you brought it up, because a lot of people have dysfunction, say foot dysfunction, but aren't in pain necessarily. But that doesn't mean that their feet are thriving. So there's probably a few broad elements that what I talked about before with toe splay, can you actively splay out your toes? Can you move them independently from each other? Things like that are a good indicator.
- [43:17]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Like you can with your hands.
- [43:18]
Jim Dooner
Yeah. So do you believe your feet should.
- [43:20]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Be able to do what your hands can do?
- [43:24]
Jim Dooner
There are extreme cases of people who have lost their hands or were born without hands or arms, and they can play piano with their feet.
- [43:30]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Really?
- [43:31]
Jim Dooner
So, yeah. So it's human body.
- [43:33]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
The brain is so adaptable, isn't it?
- [43:35]
Jim Dooner
It is amazing. But I doubt that anyone would get there maybe without the constraint of not having their hands. But it is an example of just how adaptable the feet can be. But that individual movement of the toes where you. It's an exercise or a test that I call toe piano, where you're lifting up all your toes off the ground and then trying to individually place the pinky toe down, then the ring toe, then the middle toe, then the pointer and then the big toe. And that move, independent movement of the toes can seem like a bit of a weird party trick. But the independent move of the toes is actually very important for your adaptability on the ground, especially when you're moving over uneven terrain. And so that's a good indicator. That is a very simple one to check. One major indicator is just how is your balance? Because the feet are our foundation for balance. And if you say go onto one leg and you can do this at home, set up somewhere safe next to a wall or a kitchen counter, something like that, and go onto one leg and just feel how your foot moves to stabilize in that position. So if you're really struggling to stabilize at the foot and the ankle standing on one leg, that's a sign that your feet and ankles aren't integrating well with the rest of your body. There's some kind of lack of stability through the system. And mostly that is because the shoe is taking away that in your day to day life. And so when you're barefoot on the ground and also just you're not challenging your balance, our modern environment really doesn't challenge our balance much at all. You have to seek that out. So unless you're purposely seeking out challenge to your balance through surfing or yoga or things like that.
- [45:20]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Wobble boards.
- [45:21]
Jim Dooner
Wobble boards, yeah. There's heaps of cool ways to do it. We've got our own ways, obviously. But if you're not seeking that out, then your balance will decline. And part of that is to do with other systems in the body, but a lot of it is to do with your foot and ankle function. So that's a good test to check in with.
- [45:39]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
I think on that balance point. It's so key. It appears that many people in this society living in the way in which many of us do live, find themselves in their 70s with poor balance in their 80s, which can often precipitate some life threatening falls, basically, whether from the fall itself or the consequences of that fall in terms of your loss of function. So we have this principle in the body of use it or lose it, which is absolutely true. If the brain doesn't feel you need a skill and you're not using that, it starts to down regulate it. It doesn't need to have that skill active. I think balance is one of those things. And as you say, the way in which many of us live now, we're not training balance. And so if you want to age well, if you want to make sure you're getting audit. Yeah, there's a pain piece that we're talking about. We just want to be well and be able to cross the road or deal with, you know, something you didn't quite expect. You have to move out the way and not fall over and break your hip. You need to be training your balance. Right. And we'll talk about the way you guys recommend it later because we've just spent an hour in the garden on the Soulmate, which is something I think you and Matt created at the foot collective.
- [46:58]
Jim Dooner
And your friend Seb.
- [46:58]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, and your friend Seb at the foot collective. And it's. It's really good, super fun, super easy. And I'm definitely going to be keeping mine in my kitchen now. And so just play around with balance. So I think that's really important. I wanted to get to this point in terms of looking at foot health, that it feels like there's two broad ways in which we can think about it. There is what exercises and movements can we do regularly to help encourage good quality foot function? But then there's also what shoes are we wearing for the majority of our lives? Yeah, look, I'm a huge proponent of barefoot shoes. I think everyone should at least try them. Personally, that's my belief. I've seen so many benefits with patients. I've experienced so many benefits myself. And of course there's athletic people, there's regular kind of middle aged people trying to go about their lives. I think that there's real. There's real utility for children to stay in them and not go into cushioned shoes. I really do. I've spoken about that many times on this show. But I also feel elderly. The elderly in society who are struggling with balance and movement. I've always thought, why would you put somebody struggling with balance in a cushioned shoe even further away from the ground? Right. It doesn't make any sense to me. And I know maybe eight, nine years ago I started my mom in vivos and she loved them, you know, when she was walking around and moving. So, yeah, I think balance is key. If you're closer to the ground, you're gonna have better balance than if you're further up from the ground and you're in These cushions where your brain and your foot can't actually get the feedback from the ground. Cause it's unstable.
- [48:44]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot in that.
- [48:46]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
There was a lot in that.
- [48:47]
Jim Dooner
I'm gonna wind up and let it loose. So it actually does flow on very well. From what we were talking about, about the aspects of foot function that people can test to see how their feet are functioning even if they don't have pain. So we talked about the toes play. We talked about the balance. Another one. And again, those are great exercises to do. Even just splaying out, trying to actively splay at your toes and trying to balance on one leg or in various stances that we can talk about later, trying to go up onto your toes. So, first of all, can you actually lean your body weight forward, hover your heels off the ground, and maintain that position? Right. So that is loading the forefoot, and it's giving you a lot of information about the control that you have between the feet and the ankle. So that's a test and also a good exercise. And then going up into a calf raise, which most people are familiar with, where you're just lifting your heels up off the ground as high as you can. Leaning against a wall or a kitchen counter is good for that. Just to truly test your strength with this one and mobility. So can you do that barefoot and go into, you know, how far do you get up, basically? So these are good tests and also good, like the perfect exercises to train the basic fundamentals of foot function. And most people will find that they'll struggle with some aspects of that, especially just because of the shoes. And switching or transitioning to footwear that promotes more natural function can often resolve a lot of that. But it can be harder to do that to switch or transition to shoes if you're not doing those exercises to support that. And even if you do only switch to those shoes, there still isn't really enough challenge in our modern environment to create thriving, functional feet. And, you know, you yourself have been in barefoot vivos for, I guess, 13 years now, but we still found that there was plenty of room for improvement in your balance and in aspects of your foot function. So it's a good example that the shoes are really great, really, really important place to go, but also often not enough if you want to create really thriving functional feet. So when it comes to footwear, we have been thinking about this a lot over the past. I've been involved with the foot collective for six years, and we've gone through a bunch of different Mnemonics and acronyms for how to think about footwear. And we've landed on the five Fs.
- [51:14]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
The five Fs?
- [51:15]
Jim Dooner
Fs. Yeah. So first they're kind of hierarchical in terms of importance, but also hierarchical in terms of the order in which you should progress down the five Fs. So foot shaped is the first one. So foot shaped, another word for it is an anatomical toe box, meaning that the widest point of the shoe or sandal is at the tips of the toes. So when you look at a baby's foot, they come out and accepting any sort of rare genetic conditions, their feet are the widest at the tips of the toes. And that would continue except for some kind of external pressure that would cramp them like shoes. So the feet should be wides at the tips of the toes and therefore so should the shoe. And the shoe, the next F is fixed. So it should be fixed to the back of your heel and just fixed to your foot so that your toes don't have to work in odd ways to keep the shoe on your foot. So if you wear, say a flip flop or a sandal, we call them thongs in Australia. Apparently that might mean a different thing. But the thongs aren't attached to the back of your heel and therefore you either have to turn your feet out to keep them on as you walk, or your toes have to claw to keep them on as you walk. And so that really just changes the mechanics and the efficiency of your walking. So fixed to your heel is really important. And what's important to note there is you don't need to transition to foot shaped and fixed. They will not cause any issues of overload, they will only solve issues. So if you go from a narrow pointy shoe and you've got bunions or Morton's neuroma, just changing to a foot shaped shoe, and same goes for plantar fasciitis. Just changing to a foot shaped shoe can make a big difference to the experience of the loads in your feet.
- [53:05]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Are you saying. Okay, let's get really clear here. So there's minimalist or barefoot shoes, right, which are, well, will typically have these features anyway. A wide toe box, your ability to fix your heel. No heel to toe drop usually. Right. There's obviously degrees of this. Are you saying that simply addressing those first two, even if you don't go to a barefoot shoe, so even if you stay within cushioning, but you have room for your toes and you've got the proper fit for your heel, that in and of itself can have huge improvements for people.
- [53:41]
Jim Dooner
Absolutely.
- [53:42]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
I think that's a really important message.
- [53:43]
Jim Dooner
It is, it is really important because a lot of people think about this, you know, normal shoes or conventional shoes and barefoot shoes as this black and white, either or. But it's actually a spectrum. So the 5Fs help people navigate that spectrum in a way that reduces the chance of them overloading their feet and ending up with an injury. Because if you, you know this perfectly well. We've all had stories from people who have gone from conventional cushioned, healed supportive footwear and gone straight into something like a Vivo or a Vibram. And they end up with injuries because their feet aren't able to tolerate the extra load that comes.
- [54:21]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And often they go and start running in these things.
- [54:23]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, yeah. They do too much too soon. They expect that their feet will be able to handle what they were doing before in their cushion shoes. But it's a completely different load profile on the feet when you change, when you just switch to shoes like that. So a lot of people that we're interested in helping people get out of pain, not interested in being black and white. You just have to be in these shoes. So a lot of people can't tolerate going straight to no cushioning, no heel, because it overloads certain parts of their body. So foot shaped and fixed, you can switch to, and you should switch to. There's really no reason not to. The next F is flat. So a flat, a truly barefoot or natural shoe has no heel, toe drop, and it also has no, I guess, raise in the mid foot, which is like an arch support. Right. And it also doesn't have a toe spring. So a lot of people think of flat just as the heel, but it's also at the front of the shoe and in the middle of the shoe. So a true natural shoe will be flat all the way along. And for some people, especially if they've got some kind of foot pain or condition that can be too much for their ankle mobility or too much for their calf and they can end up with issues. So sometimes it's necessary to gradually reduce the heel stack that you've got and gradually reduce that. I will also say that in certain conditions, such as, like hallux limitus, hallux rigidus, where the big toe doesn't move very well, then trying to remove the sort of spring or the rocker could be problematic for some people. So there's always context and nuance within all of this. But we're speaking in generalities and for the vast majority of people, they should be able to transition to a fully neutral heel toe drop.
- [56:12]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And you're talking here for just activities of daily living, walking, going to the office, going around the shops. The benefits come from kind of what are you doing most of the time? If you want to run with your thick cushioned shoes and your pain free when doing it, I think there's a conversation to be had around that. But if the rest of the time you're in foot shaped shoes without a heel to toe drop like you're still going to get huge benefits just from that, aren't you?
- [56:40]
Jim Dooner
Absolutely foreign.
- [56:47]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
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- [60:33]
Jim Dooner
A lot of people who, especially if they're barefooted home a lot, they can switch to a flat shoe. But some people might have to transition. And generally the more pain you have in pretty much any part of your body, the more likely your system will be to be sensitive to changes in your footwear. So you know, if you've got back pain or knee pain or foot pain and you go straight to a different shoe, flat shoe from a quite a heeled shoe, it can be too much too soon. So you just need to be aware of that. And there are a lot of brands these days and there's a, that literally we've checked it all out and there's brands at every point on this spectrum. So we've got all those listed on our website. So.
- [61:13]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And what is the website?
- [61:14]
Jim Dooner
The footcollective.com.
- [61:15]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay, so if you want to see. Well, which are good transition shoes for me if I want to go down this path. And they can get that info on your website. Brilliant.
- [61:23]
Jim Dooner
Yeah. So foot shaped, fixed, flat, flexible is the fourth one. So flexibility relates to. Can you roll your shoe up in a ball? Can you twist it, you know, along the length of the shoe? Does the shoe move, which represents how your foot is moving inside the shoe. So there's 26 bones, 33 joints in each foot. And the only reason for a joint to exist in the body is for movement to occur there. Right. Otherwise there wouldn't be a joint. So even though you've obviously got movements like the movement, the big toe, which are quite obvious and sort of macro movements, but then I was talking before about how the foot changes shape to absorb force and to produce force. So that is actually small little movements of the joints like the Tarsals and the midtarsals, the metatarsals, rather. And those movements are really important for the adaptability on the ground. So if you wear a shoe that is rigid, it actually can stop that movement. Just like a cast around your arm or a moon boot would stop that movement. The shoe does that on a lower level, basically, or a less.
- [62:33]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
That's a very powerful visual that many people are walking around with a kind of cast on their feet. Their feet are not being allowed to function because the shoe is too rigid and stiff. It's. It's pretty crazy, isn't it?
- [62:51]
Jim Dooner
It is, yeah.
- [62:51]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Once you understand this and you've experienced it, it's easy to look at it and go, how did we get to this point where everyone's walking around in these cushioned shoes? I mean, that's. I mean, you've mentioned some of it already.
- [63:03]
Jim Dooner
Yeah.
- [63:03]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Um, yeah.
- [63:05]
Jim Dooner
And it's. It's akin to if everyone was walking around with a back brace or a neck brace and they weren't allowing their back to move. And then when they do take the brace off, which is the equivalent of going from a rigid cushioned shoe to a flat, flexible, you know, shoe or without cushioning, then it's like, oh, that's a lot of movement. If I just took my back brace off after wearing it for 30 years and then tried to go and do a Jefferson curl or something at the gym, my body would be, like, freaking out because it's so much input into the system that it's not used to.
- [63:38]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- [63:39]
Jim Dooner
So that is. There is a case for transitioning to more flexibility in a shoe. And again, it's not black or white. A lot of shoes are decently flexible, but not as flexible as, say, a Vivo or a Vibram or something like that. But doing the exercises that we promote and that we've talked about are a great way to prepare your body for the flexibility of a shoe.
- [64:03]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay.
- [64:03]
Jim Dooner
Um, and the last F is feel, which we. Is really just down to the feedback that you get from the ground. So a thin sole will provide a lot of extra feedback from the ground or just provide sort of more natural feedback. Whereas a thick, cushioned sole will kind of blindfold your feet, in a sense, because there's more distance between you and the ground. We do like the analogy of the feet being like the eyes, because they're very important senses of our body, and the sensation that we get in the feet helps us adapt to the ground appropriately without having to look down at our feet the whole time to figure out what's going on.
- [64:43]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Because you can feel it.
- [64:44]
Jim Dooner
Because you feel it. Yeah. And so if you step on a spike, for example, then if you're barefoot, you'll feel that spike starting to go in, and then you'll come off it because it's like, oh, that's a. That's a spiky area. But if you've got. If you've got a very thin sole shoe, you won't get as much of that input. And so this actually happened to me once. I had a very thin sole shoe carrying firewood, and I was trudging around with a very heavy log, if I might say so, and then the stick went through my shoe, basically. So if I was barefoot, I probably would have been more aware of my surroundings. But if I, you know, in that context, a thicker shoe might have been better so that I could just trudge around with firewood and get the job done. So, again, this is contextual. There's not. It's not like everywhere you need to have a thin sole, but for things like getting around in your daily activities in a. You know, at home or out and about, or going to the gym where the environment's relatively controlled, you actually want the feedback from the ground so that you can adapt to it.
- [65:47]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. I think when I was watching some of your videos on your Instagram and researching for this conversation, one of the things you said, I believe, is that you guys at the Foot Collective see foot health as a bit of a gateway drug.
- [66:05]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, yeah.
- [66:06]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
When you start opening your eyes to it and you get into foot health, it often leads to other helpful natural behavior. So I want to talk about that. But one of the things I've experienced myself and many people, friends, family, listen to this podcast, who I recommended try out barefoot shoes, as well as finding them once they use them, incredibly comfortable. The other thing people often say is they enjoy their movement more and they feel a real connection between them and the grounds.
- [66:39]
Jim Dooner
Yeah.
- [66:39]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And I've experienced that. You know, there's all the rage about mindfulness and being present and experiencing what you're experiencing in the moment. What. Barefoot shoes actually help you do that because you actually feel the grounds. Right. So you are connected in that way to what you're doing.
- [66:54]
Jim Dooner
Definitely. And it's funny, I got my mum into barefoot shoes as well, and she. Her feedback was, it's like a whole new world of sensation has opened up. Like, I'm feeling the ground, and it's kind of. It's like you. Our feet have been blindfolded for so Long. And it's. Once you start to walk around in either barefoot or in barefoot shoes, especially in natural environments, and you start feeling all the textures that are on the ground and the way that those textures, you know, affect your feet, then it's like you've suddenly taken your blindfold off and you're like, ah, the sunrise is really nice. You know, you're getting to get these experiences that you wouldn't otherwise if you'd had a blindfold. This kind of goes to the same point if you've had a blindfold on most of your life or like a semi translucent blindfold. If you go and look at a sunrise or a sunset, it might actually be really bright, it might feel really bright, it might be too much for your eyes. But then once you adjust, then it's this beautiful scene. So it's the same kind of thing when it comes to the sensation in our feet. It can feel like a lot when people go barefoot first, especially if they're not used to it, they go on like gravel or bark or some kind of natural texture. And it's spiked and it's. And it hurts. But eventually it just feels really good. It just feels like a nice massage. And we actually refer to it as vitamin T, vitamin texture. And it's actually again like a nutrient for the foot to have pressure and texture. Go through it.
- [68:25]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. Whenever I'm staying somewhere where there's kind of gravelly drives, I'm always out barefoot on them. Cause I know 10, 15 years ago I couldn't. Would have been too painful because your feet are tight, you don't relax. The reason you can't walk on gravel isn't necessarily because you've got sensitive feet or you've genetically been born with sensitive feet, is because of the inputs. And because of that you haven't used the feet properly for so many years that it's too much. But if you do little bits, it gets easier. And you can get to the point where you can actually walk on some pretty, you know, sharpish gravel stones. No problem at all. Yeah, you just got to practice.
- [69:10]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, yeah. We talk about natural foot function being a product of natural inputs over time. So natural is sort of. People push back against that, rightly so in some ways, but it's. If you really just think about it, the natural input for the feet is frequent variable movement, pressure and texture exposure, temperature exposure. And when they're exposed to natural inputs over time, especially from a young age, but even from any age gradually exposed to more natural inputs, the product or the result is more natural function. So you become more strong and stable, more mobile and adaptable and more. You're sensitive but you're resilient. So you're not walking on that gravel going, oh, I can't feel anything. You're feeling it a lot. But you're resilient to that sensation and it can feel quite nice. Whereas unnatural inputs over time, which is all the things that we've talked about, a lack of movement, a cast around your foot, cushioning, all these things create weaker, less stable feet, stiff, rigid feet and hypersensitive feet because those inputs are seen as too much by the body, even though they're not necessarily causing it damage. The issue is the natural inputs can become damaging if you try to do too much of them too soon after a long time.
- [70:41]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, because the natural question for me to ask here is, in your view, if across society, kids were brought up where they were spending a lot of time barefoot at home, not wearing shoes in the house, and they were not being put in thick cushioned shoes with narrow toe boxes and heel to toe drops, let's say you have a country, and I'm sure we've got examples of this anyway where this happens, you're going to find that of course there is a different capability of those humans when they're adults. Right. They're going to have less sensitive feet. We know that a lot of societies who aren't in these thick cushioned shoes don't get plantar fasciitis. Doesn't exist. Right. I think it's the same with bunions.
- [71:32]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, there's actually a group called My Foot Function who are doing a study in Sri Lanka and comparing shod members of the society and unshod members. So people who wear shoes and don't in different regions of that country, but in Sri Lanka or in Sri Lanka, and they haven't published the study yet. But yeah, basically bunions do exist in unshod populations, but they're very, very rare. And so there is some genetic predisposition when it comes to bunions. But I think you've talked about this in the podcast. I'm pretty sure I've heard you talk about it. The genes are like the loading the gun and the environment pulls the trigger. So for most people, their genetic predisposition to bunions has to be triggered by an environment which is a shoe and constant flat level ground, sometimes an injury that restricts something in their ankle or something upstream and that triggers the process of the bunion forming. But yeah, it is the case that shoes are a major, I'm not going to say the root cause, but they are a major contributing factor for most foot conditions, which makes sense because the shoe is the primary environment of our feet.
- [72:45]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
But they can kind of perpetuate it, can't they? I mean, I think, I do believe it is possible to have exceptionally good foot function if you're working on it. And we're definitely going to talk about the kind of exercises you guys at the Foot Collective promotes, which is just fantastic and a lot of fun. I do believe that if you're really working on that stuff, you can probably get away with going in some sub optimal shoes and you're still going to be okay. I do believe that's possible. I do think more people will experience benefits and benefit shoes than think and I would encourage people to try them at least, or at least go throughout, through the process you guys outlined on your website to go, well, what might this feel like? How good might I feel? How good might my body feel and my efficiency of movement feel if my feet were starting to work properly? Before we get to those exercises, I just want to finish up on barefoot shoes for a minute because a lot of people will. In fact, when I posted about this, four people will say, well, what about I've got flat feet, are they suitable for me? And I know you've already mentioned it depends if it's a flexible flat foot or a rigid flat foot. I can still remember so clearly that everyone told me I had flat feet. And for many years the podiatrist put me in orthotics. But I'd have to take it everywhere with me. I'd have to move it from shoe to shoe. And at one point I thought, it's kind of ridiculous this. I'm like 24 or 25 or something. I have to take this implement around with me everywhere just so I can function. And it would help a little bit for sure, right? But I thought, I cannot be. I surely don't have to do this for the next 70, 80 years of my life or whatever. And you know, I've covered this before, but I sort of got tuned into how important foot health is. The kind of point I'm trying to get to is that 10, 11 years ago you would have looked at my feet and said, oh, not you. People would look at them and go, oh, Rong's got flat feet. Well, now I've got an arch in them, right? So by using my feet, by doing some foot exercises, by wearing barefoot shoes all the time when I'm wearing Shoes. Cause I'm barefoot at home. You know, like in many Asian houses, we don't wear shoes in our house. The arch is there. Right. It's not the highest arch in the world, but I now have an arch and I didn't. So I think there's a key message there for people that this kind of stuff is changeable.
- [75:16]
Jim Dooner
Definitely, yeah. I think people underestimate how much their body can change. And it's important to understand that the body is constantly remodeling itself.
- [75:24]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Exactly.
- [75:25]
Jim Dooner
Based on the loads and the inputs that it receives. So, you know, everyone knows that you can strengthen your biceps at the gym or you can, you know, get better at running if you run. It's the exact same principle with the feet. For some reason, the traditional footwear industry and. And, you know, orthotic industry and everything don't see feet in the same way that we all see the rest of the body, that it's trainable. And I think actually when some podiatrists in our network went through podiatry school, the dominant narrative was the muscles in the feet were too small to be trained. And that's similar to what people are told about their eyes. Their muscles are too small to be trained as too hard. But both of those narratives are changing now. We're realizing that we can train our eyes and we can train our feet. And there's plenty of studies now that show that foot strengthening is possible, improving foot function is possible, and also that wearing barefoot shoes or wearing minimalist footwear can improve your foot strength as well, simply by the fact that it's loading up your feet in ways that they don't get loaded in traditional shoes.
- [76:32]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So, yeah, there was one study, wasn't that at the University of Liverpool, that showed four months of wearing minimalist shoes. Foot strength on average in adults went up by, I think, 60 or 62%. It was ballpark there. If you just think about that in relation to any other part of the body, if you are into your strength training and someone could tell you, in four months your biceps will get 62% stronger, but you're not having to go to the gym and be doing biceps just by walking around. So many people will be like, I want that.
- [77:06]
Jim Dooner
I'm in.
- [77:07]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
I'm in. But that's what that study shows for most adults, just by wearing barefoot shoes. So you're not even doing any exercises. You're just going around your life and your foot muscles are having to be a bit more active. It's nuts, isn't it?
- [77:20]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, it's such low hanging fruit. When it's when the fact that you can simply change the environment of your foot and radically improve their function is just amazing. You don't have to spend any extra time. Yes, you have to spend some money, but you're going to spend some money on shoes anyway. At some point you'll have to prioritize your foot function. And it's. Yeah, it's really just down to the education you receive. But to wrap up that footwear conversation, I think it can be a bit overwhelming to people to go, okay, I have to buy shoes that are foot shaped and fixed and then I have to buy shoes that are this. And then I have to to buy shoes that are this. That might be necessary for some people. There's two ways you can do it. You can kind of work down the spectrum of the five Fs that we talked about, or you can buy a pair of, say, fully natural shoes like Vivo and spent gradually spend more and more time in them. Yeah, so that is also an option. Where I have a problem with that strategy is if you're only able to spend, you know, half an hour in your vivos and the rest of the time you have to spend in your very narrow, whatever it is, Nikes, Asics, sorry to name brands, but shoes that aren't foot shaped because the foot shape is so, so important for the overall function of the foot and especially if you've got any kind of condition, especially in the forefoot, then that shape of the shoe will make a massive difference. So if your option is I can only spend 10 minutes in a vivo and the rest of the time I have to wear a cushioned shoe, then go for a foot shaped cushion shoe. Same with the heels, same with all of that. But if you're like, oh, I feel fine in the vivos and the rest of the time I'm barefoot or whatever, then just build it up over time.
- [79:10]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, I just want to on this point mention that as a medical doctor, this point is really, really important to me. I know we've mentioned a few brands in this conversation. Vivo has come up. My interest is that more and more people experience the benefits of better foot health through foot exercises, through your programs like yours. And yes, also by trialing and experimenting barefoot shoes. This podcast does have a commercial relationship with vivobarefoot. I want to make that super clear. But the point of this conversation is not to raise awareness of a particular brand. The point of this conversation for me and for you guys at the Foot Collective is to raise awareness of Foot health. If people do want to go down barefoot shoes, there are many brands these days that offer the capability to do that. So I just wanted to make that point really clear for sure.
- [80:03]
Jim Dooner
And that is. I'm glad you brought it up because it's. People can get turned off if they don't like the style or they don't have a budget for a certain brand that, you know, that they hear about, and then that can turn them off, the whole thing. So what we're doing with the Foot collective and it, you know, represents. It's in our name really. We're trying to create a collective effort of footwear brands, of practitioners, of just enthusiastic people who are sharing information and building products. And obviously there's so many footwear brands now coming out that are offering different styles, different budgets, different parts of that spectrum, of that 5F spectrum. So, yeah, like I said, there's. We've got heaps of resources on our website that people can. That just help people navigate that. But yeah, it's. It's important that people know that it's not a. Yeah, a black and white either. Or there's a lot of different options and there's going to be something for pretty much everyone, for sure.
- [80:58]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay, so let's now talk about you guys at the Foot Collective and what you have been putting together. So we've mentioned, I mentioned those two sort of arms of improving foot health, hopefully as a useful framework for people to think about. This one is the minimal issues or how you might transition into them and the sort of stuff we've just covered right now. Let's talk about what are the things that we should all be doing to improve our foot health? What, you know, how can we start putting those inputs back into our feet each day? And as I've already mentioned, you guys have, you and your business partner and your mates, Mac, have been here for the last hour before we started shooting. And you guys have taken me through a sequence on the Soulmate, which is brilliant. Cause I do a lot of this stuff already. But the Soulmate was really, really good and I can see how helpful it is to people. So maybe talk about you guys and how you try and encourage more of us to get back in touch with our feet.
- [82:04]
Jim Dooner
Sure. Well, this actually relates to what I was talking about before. How I actually originally got into the foot collective was I saw the balance beams that they were selling and they were selling training systems with the balance beam. So I emailed Nick, who's the founder, and I said, you know, I'd like To get a balance beam, it's going to cost a lot to get it over to Australia, but I really want the training system because a tool like the beam or a simple thing like that doesn't really have that much value unless you know how to use it really, or if you have tips on how to progress your use with it. And so, long story short, I got a beam, started playing on it a lot, figured out a lot of different ways to use it, but also realized that the people in pain really struggle with the balance challenge and also the challenge to the loading of their feet when they're standing on a, you know, 50 millimeter diameter piece of aluminium or wood. So the Soulmate is a cork all in one foot restoration balance training tool. And it, again, it's very simple. It's literally two half domes of cork and a mini roller inside. But it has pretty much everything you need to restore natural foot function and then continue to explore it. So our whole tagline is restore to explore. You don't want to just be restoring natural function or just be getting out of pain. You want to be then exploring what's possible with your foot function through various aspects of balance and coordination. But, but at the same time, the Soulmate itself isn't this magic tool. It is very, very, very simple concept. What is, I'm not going to call it magic, but what is the most powerful thing is the training system around it. And so what we want to do is open source as much of that training as possible.
- [83:54]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So that, what does that mean, open source?
- [83:56]
Jim Dooner
Well, we have it all for free on YouTube and on our website.
- [84:00]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And I want to say one of the things I love about you guys is that you, and I've heard you say this on Instagram and in other interviews, I've heard you and some of your colleagues in the foot collective on that. You guys are a foot health, you're a foot education company. You want to give people that education. You want to, you know, as free as much as possible. There's loads of stuff on your guys Instagram and on your YouTube channel that people can do even if they don't want to get any tools like the soul mate. Right. And I think that's really awesome what you guys are trying to do there with that.
- [84:30]
Jim Dooner
Yeah. And we're really passionate about that because we don't want cost to be a prohibiting factor for people getting involved and starting their journey. So we are, we actually really think the Soulmate is amazing and we get a lot of good feedback from it. But at the Same time, there's so much that you can do without tools and there's a lot of very simple inputs that you can start designing in your life without the tools. And it's actually often for a lot of people, that is a great way to start. Just start with something free, build a habit. And then when you're ready to progress the challenge, you might want to get a tool or you might want to make your own as well.
- [85:07]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
What do you think about things like when we're brushing our teeth, trying to do one minute on our left leg and one minute balancing on our right leg. What do you think about habits like that?
- [85:20]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, I'm a big fan of in building or in building sort of movement snacks into your day, especially attaching them into or onto regular routine. So whether it's brushing your teeth or it's making your tea in the morning, tea or coffee. And yeah, aligning these simple habits like standing on one leg, like rolling out your feet can be a really great way to add more of that sort of movement nutrition for your feet into your life, into your day. But at the same time, I'm also very passionate about people developing a focused daily practice where they're actually taking the time out of the day. It doesn't have to be, you know, an hour, it might be five minutes to start with, but they're actually focusing on setting a baseline of their function and gradually improving it over time. And so that's what our routines on YouTube and on our website will help people do is get them started with a. We have a lot of five minute routines, we've got a lot of 10 minute routines. And people can build up over time so that they improve the circulation of their feet, they improve the mobility, they improve the stability, and also the balance really relates to the integration of the foot and ankle function with the rest of the body.
- [86:37]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, I think that's a really key point. So it's not about just improving foot function in isolation, it's about how does that impact everything else. And because we've just finished doing it. Right. So, you know, what do I, what did I really enjoy? I enjoyed that it was fun, right. It didn't fit. But I enjoy moving my body. Right. So I never see exercise or moving or lifting weights as a pain. I know many people do. Having said that, that didn't feel like exercise, it felt like fun. Right. And I can't wait for my kids get home to actually play because I think they're going to have fun on this as well. Just so people don't think this is just for athletic people who want to be sporty. You do this with a whole variety of people, don't you? Including people who are older, right?
- [87:26]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, yeah. Mostly we work with 40 to 80 year olds and a lot of them have foot pain. So you touched on a really important part of our training, which is the part that I'm most passionate about, which is the play aspect. And it's interesting because again, I like to look at the evolution of things and play is one of these evolutionary traits that is quite ubiquitous amongst certainly all mammals, all intelligent animals play. And the more intelligent the animal, the more it tends to play, which is quite cool and quite interesting because play can be risky. So as a, as a kid growing up, you want to climb trees, you want to wrestle, you want to throw sticks and stones at each other. There's risk involved with play. And so for it to survive as an evolutionary trait, then there needed to be some benefit to it. And obviously that benefit is the practice of movement skills so that you can be a more adaptable and resilient mover, which helps you survive in a natural environment. And also it's to connect with your tribe and to connect with the people in your life so that you have strong social community bonds, which helps you survive, obviously. So that's why it exists. And we don't tend to play as much in our modern society. Certainly kids play, but their play is a little bit restricted. But what it does is it's sort of like a hack for your brain to want to move so that people, most people think about movement as like a bit of a chore. It's hard work. It's something that they have to be disciplined in order to do. But play bypasses all of that and just goes, oh, this is fun. I want to do it. And you can play, you know, with balance. Balance is an amazing way to play. Like as soon as people get on a soulmate or start playing with their balance, usually there's smiles.
- [89:20]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- [89:20]
Jim Dooner
And it's very. I've never seen someone start playing with their balance and not go smiles. When they step off, they're like, oh, that's kind of hard. And then it makes you want to get back on and do it again. So when you can do it in a low stakes way where you're just stepping off a piece of cork, you're not not doing it, you know, on a slack line or something that's way outside of your abilities. And also you're not just even not doing it on a piece of Metal, you're doing it on a piece of cork that you can split and make wider or narrower. Like you said, it gamifies the whole process and keeps you motivated and actually can be quite addictive. Which is why I've continued to do it.
- [89:58]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
It's such good points. As I say, it didn't feel like work, it just felt like fun.
- [90:02]
Jim Dooner
Yeah.
- [90:02]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And I love the portability. So, you know, I will often travel. When I'm traveling or go on holiday with my family, I'll put a skipping rope in my bags. It's easy to pack and allows me in a very simple way to stay active wherever I am. But I'm pretty sure the soulmate's gonna be part of my packing now as well. Because it's so small and light, but I can just see it in hotel rooms or wherever. Just what I felt. And again, I spend a lot of time barefoot. Right. I wear barefoot shoes all the time. When I'm wearing shoes, I don't have anything else anymore. But even then, yes, we did it for quite a while. The sun was shining, we were playing in the garden. You were going through some stuff with me. So I don't know, 30, 40 minutes, something. But my feet felt so light and free at the end. Because you're not trying to work your feet. But it wasn't only that. Something you mentioned to me, which is afterwards, that none of us were thinking about anything else, weren't thinking about emails about work stress or life stress. It was complete mindfulness. You were totally present because you had to be. And I think that's another benefit of these kind of play based activities that yes, underneath it, you're trying to help us with our foot health and our balance and how the whole body functions. But it's done through the lens of fun.
- [91:33]
Jim Dooner
Yeah. And it's very profound. And I think people tend to think of play, especially adults think of play as sort of frivolous and silly and just something that kids do. And for adults they just have to go and work out and do their fitness. But there's so much power in putting yourself in a position where you are like a beginner. It's known as white belt mentality. And you just explore and you have some kind of constraint, like a soulmate to stand on or a hackie to throw and catch or to balance on your head or on your knee or something like that. And your body sort of figures out how to organize around that task and around that constraint. And it actually makes for much more adaptable movement systems and also like you said, you're. When you're doing it on a surface, like the soulmate, even on flat ground or a rolled up towel, something like that, or like a plank of wood, then you can be working your feet quite a lot, but not in a way where you're focusing on getting a burn necessarily or, you know, not in a traditional sort of workout sense. And like you said, your feet felt worked afterwards, but it's sort of light and free. They felt moved and they felt, you.
- [92:54]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Know, it's funny, I don't even, I don't even know what the word is to describe it. I wouldn't even call it worked.
- [93:00]
Jim Dooner
Alive.
- [93:02]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
They felt liberated. Each morning, you know, when I get up, I've got a few things that I do as part of a little routine. You know, I do foot wiping on a mat that I have just start to wake up those, the feet, basically I've got this like Amazon basics rope in my garden that I'll walk up and down on and you can just feel your foot morphing and you can feel some tight bits and then they loosen up. Right. So I do a lot of this stuff anyway. But that whole play based experience with you guys, at the end of it, my feet felt even better and even freer, which is really cool because it was just fun, you know. And I think, I know we're really pausing on this point, but everyone who's listening to this show knows that movement is important for health, yet so many people struggle with motivation. They say, I don't enjoy it, but there's always a movement people are going to enjoy. Right. But again, I mean, we'll come back to societal conditioning. If you think that movement is only about the amount of reps you do in the gym, like you've limited your view of what movement actually is. Nothing wrong with that if you like it, right? I don't go to gyms. I do all my stuff in my garden basically, or in my kitchen, you know, like this kind of stuff. And it's about. I can't see anyone who wouldn't go through what we went through. And you've got all these videos on your YouTube page and on, I think TheFootCollector.com, they're all there for people. No one's gonna do that and not have fun.
- [94:45]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, that's what I was gonna say is balance is almost inherently fun when you are playing at the right level for you, when, if you're not going, you know, too far beyond your abilities. And it also has to be not too easy. So we call it this Goldilocks zone. Not too easy, not too hard. You're wobbling, you're able to do it. But it's. You have to focus fully on the task in order to do it. And inherently, people find that fun. I've delivered many, many, many events. We actually call them, we work only on workshops, we call them play shops. Now. I've delivered them all over Australia and America. And there has never been a time where someone doesn't enjoy playing with their balance. It's something to do with our brains, where it actually puts you in this childlike state. Because if you watch children growing up, and I've got a little 18 month old daughter who I've been really loving watching growing up, they inherently want to test out their abilities with balance. And they're not stable a lot of the time. They're not stable while they're learning, but they keep going, they keep getting up, keep trying. They fall, yeah, they cry when they fall, but they never give up. They just keep going and going and going. And now Olive is trying to balance. I can see her watching me on the soulmate and on my beams, and then she'll see something on the ground and go and try and stand on it. And there's something inherent that humans want to train their balance. And the other thing about balance is that it's really accessible to pretty much anyone. If you can stand up and walk around, there'll be some level of balance training that you can do even if you can't stand. There is ways that you can train your balance, but the accessibility factor I think is really huge because a lot of people, especially if they're in pain or they've been out of the, out of the habit of exercise for a long time, they think about going to the gym or they think about going for a run and it just scares them. There's a sort of fear there or a lack of confidence that they'll be able to do that. But balance training doesn't involve a heap of mobility, doesn't involve a heap of fitness, but it can create a really solid foundation to then build upon over time to get back into those other aspects of fitness, if that's what you want to do.
- [97:03]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, and I think a key point is what you said about that Goldilocks zone. So if you're doing something that you can comfortably do, sure, do it, but you're really gonna get the growth and the adaptation. If you're on that edge where actually you can't quite balance it's hard to maintain it. Oh yeah, I managed to catch it. I just got it. That's where your brain's starting to grow and go, oh, yeah, I can't quite do this. I need to put things in place so that I can do that. I think that's a really, really important point.
- [97:34]
Jim Dooner
Yeah. And you can get addicted to that feeling of progress where the soulmate's good because it makes it very obvious where if you put it in a certain position and then that is a struggle for you and then you change that position or you change your stance over time and you're like, oh, now originally where I started is really easy. And you go, okay, well what's next? What's the harder thing? And obviously you can change your stance to make the balance harder or you can throw and catch something, or you can kick and catch something, or you can, yeah. Add in certain tasks and variables to make it harder. And there's just endless layers of complexity that you can explore there, which makes it very fun and like I said, gamified.
- [98:17]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
But I guess another key point is that it's never too late.
- [98:20]
Jim Dooner
Yes. Yeah, right.
- [98:21]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Because I think sometimes when we talk about things like this, or barefoot shoes or balance training or improving your foot health, some people naturally go, yeah, but it's kind of too late for me now. I've been in cushioned shoes since I was 3 and I'm now 70. Or. Yeah, but I can't really train my balance as a 70 year old. Not true, is it?
- [98:42]
Jim Dooner
Not true at all. No, no. And we've had success with people. Yeah. Much older than 70. And I actually did a stint in residential aged care as a physio when I was setting up the foot collective in Australia originally. And every resident there, I was working on balance if they, if they were able to stand up. And like I said, even if they weren't, there's things that you can do to get them moving and balancing. But most people don't realize they have an issue with balance until they have, until they're older and how they have a fall. And then they start training their balance because physios are coming to them and getting them up and training their balance. But it really should be something that everyone is training as a preventative measure for that. And not just as a preventative measure, but as you said, it's fun. And you know, kids, even kids don't really train their balance. Even athletic, you know, athletes who are playing sports and so on tend to only train their balance when they have an injury and they're trying to recover from an injury, but. And you know, likewise at the other end of the spectrum with older adults, they start training their balance when they have a fall, but it should just be a ubiquitous, ubiquitous practice across all generations. And the cool thing with our kind of training is that a kid could play with their grandma and just work in a harder stance than the grandma I was working at. And likewise with your kids and me.
- [100:10]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And you, you obviously were doing this for ages. So we were able to still play the game at a level that is challenging for both of us and we can very easily do that. So as you say, I can play with my kids. You know, my kids could play with their grandma. There's all kinds of things there. You guys must get this. I certainly get this a lot. I've seen these sort of comments and I've experienced them in real life in the past about. Yeah, Jim, but those Buffett shoes just don't look very good, you know? Right.
- [100:43]
Jim Dooner
Yeah.
- [100:43]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
What do you say to someone who is persuaded by the arguments you are making or that I've made before, thinks that yes, my foot health needs improving, but just cannot take that step because their idea of what a shoe should look like has been heavily influenced by how they've grown up, what they've seen in fashion, and I guess what the shoe industry has told them a shoe should look like.
- [101:16]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, it's a tough one. And it's certainly a comment that we get a lot is those shoes are just ugly and.
- [101:23]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Which I disagree with. I think they're way better than they used to be.
- [101:27]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, I think there's a perception as well where if all you're used to is narrow heeled shoes in of various types, then a wide flat shoe does look strange. But now to me, the narrow heeled shoes look really weird and strange. So there's a, you know, there's a, there's a perception issue there. And like you said, a lot of it is cultural. And at the end of the day, people just have to make a call on whether they want to prioritize their aesthetic more than their health and function or not. And it is one of those things. You're never going to change everyone. And there's this, you know, there's this spectrum of readiness for change. And if someone is too hung up on the look of a shoe, even, even if they sort of understand that they want to, that they should improve their foot function, some people have to be forced into improving their foot function through pain. So I saw this quote the other Day. I wish I could remember it perfectly. I think it was Alan Watts. I'm gonna. I'm probably gonna butcher it. But it was basically saying that reality cannot be ignored except at a cost. And the longer the reality is ignored, the greater the cost. So we can ignore the reality of our foot function needing certain inputs at the. You know, in the name of fashion and aesthetic, but over time, there will be costs to that. And some people just have. There are actually a lot of people who have come into our community who found out about us years ago and just sort of on the back burner. And eventually they were like, yep, I just figured it was time. My feet were hurting too much. I was just gonna try it. And then they fully buy into it, and then their whole mind is changed and their perception has changed. But it sometimes takes a certain trigger, like a pain condition, to get them into that.
- [103:25]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hey. And to be clear, there were times in our life when we weren't wearing these shoes. Right. And so you come to it when you come to it.
- [103:31]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, sometimes it's just planting seeds in people's minds and giving some level of awareness. On the flight over, coincidentally, Mac and I sat next to a woman who had plantar fasciitis for the last 18 months, and she'd been given supportive shoes, orthotics, and not been told to get out of her shoes. That cramped her feet together and hadn't been given any exercise.
- [103:55]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Please tell me, did she give her a workshop on the plane?
- [103:57]
Jim Dooner
Oh, I love it. I literally got out my pen and paper and wrote her out an entire plan of. Of which videos of ours to watch, which podcast to listen to and which shoes to get and all of this. And she was fully open to it. And I think that's what we see most commonly is people who are hungry for that information, because the traditional approach doesn't intuitively make sense. Same with you at one point. At a certain point, you're like, this doesn't seem to jive. Like, why would I have to do this and then not do anything else for my feet? Why would I have to be dependent on this piece of plastic or this shoe for the rest of my life? And so people are hungry for that information, but they're not being given it by the people who are authorities on the topic. Yeah, and the people who are authorities on the topic aren't being given that information when they go through their university training. We certainly weren't given this information when we went through our physio training.
- [104:50]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And you guys, as well as educating the public. You also do training for healthcare professionals like doctors and physios, right?
- [104:56]
Jim Dooner
Yeah.
- [104:57]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So where do people find that? If there's a doctor listing or a nurse or a physio who goes, actually, you know what, I'd love to learn a bit more about the foot and how to help my patients or my clients. Is that also@thefootcollective.com?
- [105:10]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, yeah, it's all in there. So it's thefootcollective.com and you hit the connect tab on there. So we are really trying to get information out to the public, like you said, but we're trying to create a strong network, a passionate network of practitioners who are on this wavelength or at least open to this way of thinking about feet and movement health in general and want to give their patients an active and empowering approach, which is very different to most of the traditional healthcare approaches. And we have, we got physios, we've got podiatrists, we've got chiros, we've got osteos, we've got personal trainers, we've got psychologists. Like, there's people from all walks of life when it comes to healthcare, but we're all on this same page about foot health and also the effect of our foot health on the rest of our body. And, you know, the, the, like you said, the foot health being a gateway to other aspects of natural health. So that's one of our major missions at the moment, is building that network of practitioners because those are the people that all of the people in pain are going to see.
- [106:16]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. So they can spread the word.
- [106:17]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [106:18]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Of course. Even if people are aware of this importance, they may choose not to go down this route for a variety of different reasons. They may also feel, yeah, but I'm fine with what I'm wearing. Yeah, I get what you're saying. Maybe for some people, but for me it's not a problem. Okay. So I want to acknowledge that even though I would argue it possibly is a problem that you don't know about yet. But also I've been thinking a lot about change over the last couple of years and my next book is all about how you make change that actually lasts. And I think a really important ingredient for long term change, not change that lasts for a few weeks or a few months, where you really change for good is honesty, like a real honesty with yourself. So if you go down this route and go, yeah, I've heard Rongan talk about this before. I've heard what Jim's got to say about this. I'm pretty sure my foot health needs improving. I'm pretty sure that my work shoes are not helping me and I haven't made any changes despite knowing that that self inquiry there that you can do for yourself is priceless. There is a real opportunity to ask yourself, why am I not making this change? What is holding me back?
- [107:44]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, because I imagine the answer you get to is probably holding you back in a lot of other areas as well. It allows you to understand more about yourself and hopefully make, hopefully facilitate the change that you want to make. And sometimes like you said it, there's various barriers that people have to making change. Could be the time they feel they have in the day, could be a lack of structure or guidance. But yeah, it's, I think it's, that's a really good point that if, if you're aware and maybe you do have an understanding like go to thefootcollective.com and follow the training, things like that, and you're not doing it, then yeah, it's very helpful to take a broader look at your own life and go, well, why not?
- [108:27]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And don't beat yourself up. Certainly don't go down the guilt or shame route. Just use it as a, oh, as an opportunity to learn something about yourself. Jim, I've loved this conversation. I know there's lots of other things we could have spoken about. Before we finish, there is one thing I wanna talk to you about which is something I think I saw in one of your. I think it's one of your Instagram posts and I loved it because something I think about a lot and it's to do with the issue of running.
- [108:53]
Jim Dooner
Oh yeah, of course.
- [108:54]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
If your foot health is better, you're going to run better. Right? I think most people can make that leap. But let's say you decide to make the leap to minimalist shoes and all other aspects of your life. But you're like, you know what? I can run fine in my cushioned modern running shoes and I quite enjoy it. Right. A, what's your perspective on that? But B, what is your perspective on people running in their running shoes and then spending the rest of the day also in their running shoes?
- [109:31]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, well, there's a couple of points and I've been thinking about this a fair bit recently and I think something a question for people to ask themselves is do you just prefer running in your running shoes or are they the only shoes that you can run in? So it's not necessarily about what should you wear when you're running, but what could you wear. Could you run barefoot without hurting or barefoot or in minimalist shoes, obviously in a safe area. Could you do that without having some kind of foot pain or issue up the chain? If you couldn't, then the running shoes are probably covering up some level of dysfunction in your body, which is fine if that's a short term thing. But you. I would suggest that a good practice would be building up the ability to be able to run barefoot or in the minimalist shoes and then choosing which shoes you want to run.
- [110:26]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- [110:26]
Jim Dooner
Because that is a sign of a very. Of a healthy, functioning foot that is able to tolerate the forces of running and that will help you run better whichever shoes you're running in. So again, great point. Yeah, that would take time and not saying go out and do your usual mileage barefoot or in barefoot shoes. But it's an interesting question to ask. Could I run barefoot? And at the same time, it's a personal choice when it comes to running. And there's also different factors around performance and health. So if running is like your job or it's your thing and you're really caring about performance, then there will be certain qualities of running shoes that can help your performance. Which is why you see runners wearing those kinds of running shoes.
- [111:14]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
All these super shoes.
- [111:15]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, the carbon plates and everything. So there's absolutely a role for using tools like footwear to improve performance. But the, I think the issue people run into, run into is conflating performance with health and going, okay, well that shoe is good for my running. I see a lot of people getting around day to day in their runners, you know what I mean? Maybe not necessarily carbon plates, but people sort of see running shoes as what's optimal for their feet, but because they're comfy and cushioned.
- [111:49]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And I get that, but it's potentially problematic, like go for your run in them if that's what you're choosing to do. But some people then, especially in the working from home era, will spend the rest of the day in those same shoes.
- [112:04]
Jim Dooner
The main issue is that running in cushioned, heeled running shoes can take away the feedback from the ground that tells you you're not running well. So if you ran barefoot and you were striking heavily on your heel, then you would get feedback from your body saying, stop doing that basically. So I think what is a problem is people only running in certain shoes that take away that feedback and they actually don't realize that they're not running in an optimal way. They might be over striding and not realizing it. They might Be, you know, having issues with their technique that could be improved simply by the process of gradually building up running barefoot. But again, it's a very personal choice what people use. And it's the same goes for sporting footwear, by the way. So a lot of people go, well, I do Olympic weightlifting, so I'm gonna wear a heeled shoe. And it's like, yes, that's a good context for a heeled shoe because of the biomechanical advantage.
- [113:05]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, but you wouldn't then wear that heeled shoe walking around your office or going around the supermarket. And I think the point I saw on your Instagram post, at least was, or maybe my interpretation of it was, if you're gonna run in running shoes and you're happy with that, perhaps don't spend the rest of the day in them also.
- [113:26]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [113:27]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
You know, maybe that's the time to actually go. I'm go back now to more minimalist shoes or a wide toe box shoe the rest of the time.
- [113:34]
Jim Dooner
Exactly. Yeah. We refer to it as the daily driver. So get your daily driver right. Go through that process of transitioning to natural footwear for your daily driver, the shoe that you're in most of the day, because that is the environment, the main. The primary environment of your foot. And then if you need to wear certain shoes for running, certain shoes for Olympic lifting, or you want to wear those, then, yeah, go for it. That's a personal choice. But if you're finding that you're getting really a lot of issues with your body while you're running, which apparently 80% of runners do, get injured every year, then you might want to go through that process of inquiry of like, well, what's going on with my body? Why am I getting injured when I'm running, which is one of the most natural forms of human movement. And a lot of it, I think, comes down to people not realizing that they're running technique or something about their body is not integrating well. And the shoes are often covering up that.
- [114:29]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Agreed.
- [114:30]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, yeah.
- [114:30]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
But one of my best mates, after hearing me rave about barefoot shoes for a few years, many years ago, he started wearing them for work, for, you know, for pretty much 80% of the time, he was a runner. And he didn't for the first two or three years when he. When he ran, he would run in his, you know, cushion running shoes. But naturally, once you kind of tune into barefoot shoes, you like the feeling and you like the fact that you can feel the ground. He then gradually transitioned in as well. And now you know, he's wearing them all the time, basically he runs in them, he works in them, he does everything in them now. But again, that took a period of years. Right. It wasn't overnight. He built up to that very intentionally.
- [115:16]
Jim Dooner
I think people really need to understand and acknowledge that they've been in conventional shoes for decades, usually like from a, from a young age. And so getting out of those conventional shoes isn't going to happen overnight. Just like you said, it's a process and a lot of it is just trial and error. And I think these days a lot of people are disconnected from the signals their body gives them and they don't really listen to their bodies. And that's something that we do a lot in our programs and our membership is really cultivate this practice of listening to your body and understanding the signals and working with the signals that it's giving you. Because if you ignore the signals or you don't understand how to interpret them, then that's when you end up with bigger issues down the line.
- [116:04]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, totally agree, Jim. To finish off, for someone who has heard our conversation, Jim, and their interest has been piqued, they're like, okay, I think there's something here that relates to me. I don't know quite yet how to navigate this, but I've got a few niggles, maybe a bit of pain. And I kind of feel that what Jim and Rongan are saying is where I need to go, but I feel a bit scared, I feel a bit apprehensive. What advice would you give to them?
- [116:40]
Jim Dooner
The best advice actually would be to head to our website, have a look through. But if it's someone who's wanting more guidance, we have created a membership platform with an app that, and we've tried to make very, very accessible. It's 21 Australian dollars a month and whatever that is in British pounds. But we've got, it's literally a community platform. Because what we find is if you don't really know where to start, you don't understand something, or you've got a question about your body, you know, going straight to a practitioner who you may or may not, who may or may not be on this wavelength, can be sometimes counterproductive. But if you can just ask a question in a very accessible way to a group of practitioners and other people in the community who've been through what you're going through, that can make all the difference. So I hate to say to buy something from us, but I'm talking about that specific situation that you mentioned. For someone who wants to play around, explore what we've got. Then I would go to the website and look at the free training and there's. There's routines for every condition. Not every condition, but most of the common conditions that we see with feet.
- [117:56]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Bunion, fasciitis, Morses, neuroma, ankle sprains, bone spurs.
- [118:01]
Jim Dooner
Yeah, bone spurs. That's a whole topic that we could probably explore. But yeah, all of those conditions. And also foot strength, toe splay. Yeah, we've got heaps of training videos. The only thing is, if you're in pain, guidance I think can be pretty helpful on where to start. But a lot of those videos and routines are very gentle and accessible. I've purposely designed them to be very unlikely to flare you up. And it's really, again, down to you exploring and listening to your body along the way and being aware that it's possible to do too much too soon. But it's also possible to just avoid everything and never, never improve. So, you know, I think that would be the trajectory is start with the free stuff. If you feel like you need more guidance, get into the membership and ask some questions and then we can help direct you from there.
- [118:58]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. And in terms of free stuff, I mean, even just spending more time barefoot at home. Yeah, even that will start to, you know, re engage that connection, won't it, between your brain and your feet and you'll start to feel your feet function and get them moving. Even that can be a very powerful start for some people.
- [119:18]
Jim Dooner
Definitely. Yeah. Just take your shoes off at home. Build up to it if you need to. Grass is a great place to go barefoot and play around with your balance and yeah, do some of the routines. It's all free, but it's really just down to you to progress and seek guidance when you feel you need it. And we are there to provide as much of that guidance as possible. And our network is growing so that when people do need, in person, individualized assessment and guidance from a practitioner, then we want to be able to direct them to their local practitioner who thinks this way. Yeah.
- [119:54]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Jim, it's been wonderful chatting to you. Thanks for taking me through the routine of the garden before pleasure. Thanks for all the incredible work you and your colleagues at the foot Collective are doing and it's been a pleasure talking to you.
- [120:05]
Jim Dooner
Likewise, Rangan. Yeah, it's been an honor and I'm grateful for everything that you're putting out into the world because you take so many different aspects of health and make them accessible and yeah, I'm super stoked to be able to share our piece of that puzzle.
- [120:20]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Appreciate it mate. Thank you.
- [120:21]
Jim Dooner
Thanks.
- [120:26]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life and also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else. Remember, when you teach someone, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information. Now, before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday 5. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email I share exclusive, exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I've been consuming, and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect. And I have to say, in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. So if that sounds like something you would like to receive each and every Friday, you can sign up for free@drchatterjee.com Friday 5 Now if you are new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that I have written five books that have been bestsellers all over the world covering all kinds of different topics Happiness, food, stress, sleep, behavior change and movement, weight loss and so much more. So please do take a moment to check them out. They are all available as paperbacks, ebooks and as audiobooks which I am narrating. If you enjoyed today's episode, it is always appreciated if you can take a moment to share the podcast with your friends and family or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. And please note that if you want to listen to this show without any adverts at all, that option is now available for a small monthly fee on Apple and on Android. All you have to do is click the link in the episode notes in your podcast app and always remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle change is always worth it because when you feel better, you live more.
- [122:42]
Jim Dooner
Sat.