Hookworm at the Beach

My Facebook feed has been full of stories about the Canadian couple who acquired hookworm, or as the story stresses, larva migrans, while vacationing in the Dominican Republic. Of course, many of the stories tell you that the solution for this is that you should always wears shoes on the beach.

Oh, really?

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Statins and Tendons Don’t Mix

As regular readers here know, I am rather laid up at the moment. On December 10, 2017 I managed to rupture my Achilles tendon while playing tennis. I’ve previously written about this in What’s Up, Doc?, followed by What’s Afoot?.

So, here’s an update along with some thoughts about why I’m in this predicament. (Hint: look at the title of this post.)

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Great Eclipse

We now interrupt our non-regular and completely unscheduled set of Out West posts (yes, I’ll get to them later) for my quick trip to southern Illinois to view the eclipse in its totality.

And of course I found time to do other things.

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The Plantigrady Bunch

A couple of weeks ago there were a bunch of articles about a new study discussing why humans walk heel-toe. The articles related that to dogs and cats, who walk on their toes.

Unsurprisingly, I have some bones to pick with the articles. (Hell, I have bones to pick with just about everything, right?)

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Does Running Barefoot Improve Your Working Memory?

There have been quite a few articles out about a new study that claims that running barefoot, as opposed to running shod, improves your memory. I thought I’d take a look at the study to see what it really said, and just what it means to improve your working memory.

Barefooters probably won’t like what I have to say.

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Ya Wanna Get In Shape For Hiking?

Central Ohio is probably not the best place to be located if you are trying to get in shape for hiking or backpacking somewhere with mountains. But I do have a favorite place to do as much as I can.

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Neutrining: The Most Important Health Discovery Ever

There’s a new health breakthrough related to barefooting that I thought I should report on. It not only can make you feel much better and lead a healthier life, it manages to verify, and then magnify qi.

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Overselling

There’s an article that’s been showing up on my Facebook feed, about The Scientific Reasons Why You Should Just Always Be Naked. In it, it discusses going barefoot.

But it oversells it, and gets it wrong. Their supposed reason for going barefoot just makes up the science.

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Your Feet Are Killing You

Many barefooters are aware of Simon Wikler’s book, “Take Off Your Shoes and Walk”, from 1961. You can even see a bit of it at the Parents for Barefoot Children site.

You may not be aware that he had an even earlier book.

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The Western Assumption

Early this week, while highlighting Allan Savory, I noted his appearance on the new PBS series Earth: A New Wild. There was another episode of the series this past Wednesday, entitled Forests, that included a visit to the Huaorani in the Amazonian Rainforest.

What struck me about the segment was how little the westerners even attempted to fit into the environment.

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The Germs Have Eyes

Yes, they do. They all have little teeny tiny eyes that they use to look at you before they decide to infect you. And if they see that you have bare feet, they say to themselves, “I got one!” They then race each other to see who can be first in infect.

Of course, that’s silly.

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High Heels are WEIRD

I imagine you read about the study from a few weeks back that determined that men tend to prefer women wearing high heels.

My suspicion is that the results are extremely culturally dependent.

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Foot Bath Baloney

I thought I’d deal with some more foot-related quackery.

I present the amazing Ion Detox Foot Bath.

Snort.

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Acclimatization Inadequacy Syndrome

Ken Bob Saxton, in his book Barefoot Running, Step by Step, identifies what he calls B.R.E.S.: Barefoot Running Exuberance Syndrome. He refers to some of the pains one can get when getting too exuberant about barefoot running and overdoing it. Like everything else, you have to work up to barefoot running.

The same principle applies to acclimating to the cold. I’ve called that Acclimatization Inadequacy Syndrome.

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Lack of Support for Support

There is a very interesting (and long) article about whether bare feet are better at the Neuroanthropology site. The article is well supported with scientific articles.

The article’s discussion of “support” and what is “natural” got me thinking about a different way to look at things.

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