Five fingers shoes

Five fingered shoes are the latest craze in shoe design to hit the high street (November 2010), but are they any good and do they help our health.

Probably the most compelling feature of these shoes is their appearance, where a separate and externally visible toe compartment exists for each of the toes. This gives these shoes a very distinctive appearance, almost like a human foot.

Some people describe these five fingered shoes as gloves for the foot.

What do they do

At first these five fingers shoes look like the latest footwear gimmick, but there may be more to them than just their strange appearance.

The idea behind the fiver fingers style is to allow each toe to work separately and independently of its neighbour and the rest of the foot. This is of course something that our feet were designed to do naturally, but which modern footwear, with its constraining designs, largely prevents.

Interesting but very straightforward research shows that people who always walk barefoot see their toes spread out like a fan as they bear weight upon them. This is of course the way that the feet are supposed to react, but it is something that cannot happen in a typical shoe that restrains and restricts the toes.

Furthermore the toes will level and adjust themselves independently of one-another on different and uneven terrains. They spread, bend and compress as individual digits, five on each foot. This means that the feet can actually start to feel and even grip the surface on which they walk or run. Something that a regular shoe actively prevents.

It all sounds simple and obvious, however in hard soled shoes where all five toes are "fitted" into a single toe box, the feet and toes behave very differently. In fact they are very limited in terms of any movements that they make.

Support for the fiver fingers shoe

Many runners and athletes have been testing these five fingers shoes and most seem to support the theory behind them. It is though that they can result in a more natural way of walking and running. Indeed, the fact that various distance running world record holders from Africa have achieved their records running barefoot supports this claim.

There are claims that five finger shoes can improve posture, remove back pain and generally help with wellbeing, but since this product is very new these claims have yet to be substantiated by long term tests.

A further piece of evidence that proponents of five fingers footwear put forward is - the dramatic difference in the foot shape and geometry of a person who never wore shoes compared to someone who has always worn them.

In the shoe wearer the toes are often constricted, sometimes with one or more toes overlapping adjacent toes. The big toe is often twisted inwards and the second toe can be as long or longer than the big toe. In an unrestricted (none shoe wearing) foot these features are rarely seen.

So, should you but this type of shoe?

The jury is still out, however there appears, at least superficially, to be some compelling evidence to support the wearing of these shoes. However, how well they will work for individuals whose feet have any of the deformation characteristics describe above is open to question.