 If your foot is not shaped the way this shoe is shaped, that's a problem. And if it is, and why are you trying to shove your foot into something that's not foot shaped. And if your foot is shaped this way, it's not supposed to be. So you are a master's all-American sprinter. Tell us how you became aware of the dangers of traditional footwear. Well, so being a master's all-American sprinter means for men over 60, which I am now, I'm one of the fastest guys in the country. And that happened in part because of this transition we're gonna talk about. So 15 years ago is when I got back into sprinting after a 30-year break and I spent the next two years getting injured pretty much constantly. And I was living in Boulder, Colorado and one day a friend of mine who's a world champion runger, which in Boulder means your neighbor because they're everywhere, said to me, why don't you try running barefoot and see what you learn. Now I'm not gonna suggest people running barefoot even though it changed my life, we'll get there. So don't panic. But what I learned is simply this. I had a form problem that I couldn't feel in a regular shoe because of all the padding, all the cushioning and just some other issues as well. And when you're running barefoot, running with bad form hurts and running with good form feels good and good form is better for your body. So there was a natural transition from my bad form to the good form because again, doing it wrong felt bad. And that made my injuries go away. I became faster. I became a master's all-American sprinter. And I just wanted that natural movement experience as much as I could have it. And that led me to make some sandals based on a 10,000 year old design idea. And then that led to zero shoes and we'll get into that. But more, what I discovered, once I had the experience of getting out of the shoe that everyone recommended, a big, thick padded, motion roll shoe, wait, I'm gonna grab one. Something that looks like this thing. Heel, pointy toe box, a whole bunch of cushioning. As I started diving into this more, I found that every feature of the modern athletic shoe, and this is true of casual shoes as well, but especially athletic shoes, every feature that they pitch to you as being beneficial is demonstrably proven to be bad for you in ways I know people are gonna argue, I know people are gonna have an issue with this because they heard it from their doctor or they got at the shoe store. But everything I'm gonna point out at some point during our little chat, people are gonna go, oh yeah, that makes sense. Because prior to, we forget, prior to 1974, there was no such thing as a big padded motion roll shoe. What I can say is that if you look in PubMed, if you look in the research on running related injuries, their cause and their cure, you won't find any of that info prior to about 1972 because it just wasn't happening because shoes then were made more like what we do and all we're doing is getting out of the way to let your body do what's natural. Yeah, I mean, I remember the original Nike waffle sole. Well, the original one was very similar to what we do. It was really flat, really thin. I remember I was 12 years old when I put on that shoe for the first time and the one thing it did, it was technically flat but it had the cushioning in the front of the shoe kind of disappeared. So as you lean forward to kind of put you on your toes, as a sprinter, I vividly remember going, this is how I run, it was amazing. And then, wait, I'm gonna give you the secret. Bill Barrowman, who founded Nike, a couple of years later, had some new runners coming to him who got at Kelly's Tendinitis and he was sharing a building with some sports podiatrists and he said, you know, what do I do for these guys? And the doctors said, oh, clearly they're Achilles of Shorten from wearing higher heel dress shoes, make a higher heeled shoe, running shoe, put a wedge of foam in there. Cut to the end of this story, 30 years later, one of those doctors was at a track meet with a friend of mine, a guy who worked with Barrowman for decades. And my friend said, your idea of the elevated heel padded, motion control shoe has become ubiquitous. That's what every modern shoe looks like. What do you think about that? And these doctors said, biggest mistake we ever made. They said, you know, there's Achilles Shortening thing, we had no evidence for that. We were seeing everything as in need of a prosthetic solution. We didn't realize it would cause all the problems that it's caused in the last 50 years. And it's caused a lot of problems. Yeah. Shall we jump in? Yeah, let's dive in. As you go along, I'll share my experiences with problems from these shoes, but you start. Well, I'm just gonna, let's do a couple of things that again, hopefully will just make sense to people. And if all I do is make you kind of wonder what's going on, that's good enough. Not trying to convince you to come and buy zero shoes. I just want you to really think about something that we haven't thought about in 50 years. Because look, frankly, the marketing departments from these major shoe companies, they're brilliant. They have convinced us of a bunch of things because we don't know physics or we don't, most of us don't know physics well enough to dispute the misuse of physics they've given us. Sorry, let's start with the simplest thing. A modern athletic shoe, typically, some people can't see this, has a pointy toe box that squeezes your toes together. A, that's not comfortable. B, it can lead to bunions. And C, if you can't move your big toe independently, you're not getting the full strength out of your arch. But the simple thing is, if your foot is not shaped the way this shoe is shaped, that's a problem. And if it is, and why are you trying to shove your foot into something that's not foot shaped. And if your foot is shaped this way, it's not supposed to be. And it's forgetting in the way of natural function. Let's look at another one that's really easy. There's an elevated heel on almost all these shoes. When you elevate your heel, that changes your posture. It tips you forward just a little bit, but then you have to accommodate that. You need to do something with your ankles, your knees, your hips, your back to accommodate the change of your posture. Well, this is why people end up with knee pain, hip pain, back pain, ankle pain because those joints aren't made to handle that kind of force. So simply the elevated heel, and most people think about high heels, they know that's silly, but even just a little bit of elevation changes your posture just enough that it cause problems and all this other joints. All right, here's where, actually I'll do one that's a little less controversial than the one I'm gonna end on. So you have over 200,000 nerves in the soles of each of your foot. Soles of each of your foot, each of your feet. Let's do plural, what the hell? That's their, those are there for a reason. It's to tell your brain and your body, your base of your spine first for reflexes and your brain for every other motion you do. What you're stepping on, what you're stepping in, what the terrain is so that you can move efficiently and effectively and enjoyably. Well, imagine what happens if you don't give that information to your brain. It makes it so you can't balance as well. You don't have as good, your agility isn't as good, your mobility isn't as good. And your brain literally changes its shape to stop paying attention to your feet. This is not a good thing. Well, when you have a bunch of foam between you and the ground, guess what happens? That feedback loop disappears or not necessarily disappears but is highly, highly muted. And more importantly, when your brain's getting this information, the first thing that it wants to do is move your feet to deal with that balance, agility and mobility. You have a quarter of the bones and joints of your entire body in your feet and ankles. Joints are supposed to move. If the shoe you have has a stiff sole, this one doesn't even bend in a spot where your foot naturally bends. If your shoe has a stiff sole, you can't get that balance, agility and mobility for one. And if you have arch support, this is where things get really controversial because many people think they need arch support for whatever reason they do. I understand. And in fact, I'll give you a way out of what I'm about to say in a moment. But we know if you support your joints, I'm putting air quotes around support. If you put your arm in a cast, all the muscles, ligaments and tendons around that joint that isn't being used get weaker. So guess what happens when you do that with your feet with arch support and stiff shoes? Same thing. Research shows that you lose up to 17% of the muscle mass and strength in your feet in as little as 12 weeks. That doesn't go to zero, of course, but it gets pretty far down. Now, if you think for some reason you need arch support, not gonna argue with you, but I'll give you something interesting. If you go and get an, well, two interesting things. If you go and get a custom made orthotic and put it in a shoe that already has some arch support, the construction of the shoe is interfering with the orthotic. And as you wear the shoe and the foam breaks down, it interferes with the geometry of the orthotic. So our shoes are totally flat on the inside. So if you feel like you need to wear an orthotic, this is the best platform to wear it in. And the number one orthotic researcher in the world was weird at the International Foot and Ankle Biomechanics Summit and he came up to another researcher, a woman named Dr. Irene Davis who does a lot of the research on minimalist footwear and said, you know, I love these zero shoes, but I'm gonna wear my orthotics in them. And he thought she was gonna get all upset and she goes, great, in a month, shave them down by 50%. Then a month later, shave them down by another 50%. Then a month later, throw them away. And he went, oh. So, and last but not least, here's one last thing about footwear. Most shoes are heavy. They weigh enough that it actually changes the way you move and it changes the amount of effort you have to put into walking, running, hiking, or whatever you like to do. So what we've done is we've made things super lightweight also. So lightweight, we've had people literally go to sleep still wearing their shoes because they forgot they had them on. Maybe they were passed out drunk, I didn't ask. But suffice it to say, you know, lightweight is important as well, especially if you're doing anything, any sort of hiking or running over distance, the more weight you have on your feet, the harder it is to do that. What about the argument that if I'm gonna be running long distances, I really need super cushioning because I'm running really long distances. Well, I'll do the simple answer first, then I'll give the physics answer. The simple answer is that your muscles, ligaments, and tendons work better than any kind of cushioning that's ever been developed. And every kind of cushioning that's ever been developed, there's two things about it. One, it breaks down almost immediately. Two, it doesn't function the way we think. When it breaks down, it can change the way your foot cannot touch the ground. It can make you pronate too much or supinate too much or, you know, it does all these things that actually impact your knee, your hip, and your back, et cetera. We have hundreds of thousands of people who have discovered that getting out of cushioned shoes, first of all, it gives you that feedback so you can move better, interact with the ground better, and use your muscles, ligaments, and tendons the way they're designed to be used as springs that have shock absorbers and joint protectors. Actually, it just occurs to me to give you this example. Dr. Irene Sacco in Brazil took a bunch of elderly women, women over the age of 65, and put them in a minimalist shoe, no cushioning, no padding, and just said, just wear these. These women all had knee osteoarthritis. So, and not just, you know, complaining of knee pain, they had X-rays and showed that they had osteoarthritis. Within six months, for almost all those women, the arthritis was gone, and some of them started running five case in their 70s for the first time ever because they were able to move for the first time. If you find indigenous tribes, they don't have padded shoes, they don't have podiatrists either. So, and ironically, if you look at the shoes of like, anybody running on a track meet up to about a mile, their shoes have basically no cushioning either. So there's that, but let's talk about the physics just because I'm a physics geek. When you have padding, oh, here's another thing about padding. Sorry, I just thought about this before we do the physics. Actually, it's related to physics. All cushioning is essentially designed to handle a particular weight at a particular speed. The speed has to do with how much the foam can uncompress after it compresses, and the weight has to do with how dense the foam is. If you're not that weight running at that speed, the foam actually gets in the way of proper performance. Same thing with walking, actually. In fact, a company whose name I won't mention, but it rhymes with Mikey, they claim they have an ad where they say one of their new shoes gives you the sensation of propelling you forward. Ah, yes. Well, it gives you that sensation because as your heel is coming off the ground, the foam uncompresses faster than your heel is moving off the ground, so it feels like it's tapping you in the heel, but it's not doing anything. It gives you a feeling of something happening, but the feeling is where things get really interesting from the physics side. What cushioning does is it spreads out the pressure that your foot would otherwise feel, but it doesn't change the amount of force that's going into your body. And when your foot can't feel it, you tend to land with your foot slightly in front of your body, usually on your heel, with your leg pretty much outstretched, which means that force is going past your foot into your ankle, your knee, your hip, and your back. Interestingly, if you want to study Neostroarthritis with animals, you take a rabbit, you straighten its leg, and you hit its heel, just like what I described humans do with every step in a cushioned shoe, then it gets arthritis. Then when they want to compare some new arthritis drug to the control, what they do is they just stop hitting the heel of the rabbit and it gets better. So, the cushioning, it never existed prior to the early 70s, and everybody was totally fine, and we just now have a million people who've reported the same thing. So, actually, last thing about cushioning, you hit a giant can of worms. It can feel really good, admittedly. Lying on a memory foam mattress feels great. Sitting on a memory foam chair feels great. There's lots of things that feel great, that taste great, that look great, that are not good for us. And cushioning is one of those things. Gets in the way of natural movement, gets in the way of proper sensation that you need for balance, agility, mobility, breaks down, affects everything. It can feel really good when you're in the shoe store, but feeling good is not the most important thing. And, frankly, I would argue, only because we have hundreds of thousands of people who've told us that getting out of something big and padded, using your muscles, ligaments, and tendons is actually more comfortable than when you're using something that gets in the way. All right. Now, you're preaching to the choir because we were talking off camera that I started using barefoot shoes 20 years ago, because I was a late runner. My wife was a really good marathoner, finished the 100th running of the Boston Marathon. And she talked me into running because I didn't want to. And I developed, oh, you name it, I had a shin splint, so I developed arthritis in my knees, had to wear braces on my knees, but running was good for me, right? And I was doing five, 10Ks every weekend and a half marathons, and I was swallowing NSAIDs because of my knees, and it was good for me. And it's funny, after I changed my shoes. Well, pause right there. What was the thing that inspired you to look into your shoes as something to change to solve what was going on? Because most people just keep trying the same, a variation of a theme year after year after year. Well, the odd thing is, I'm old enough to have worn earth shoes. Hey, stand in line. Yeah, that's really old. And, you know, it occurred to me that having a heel that was raised was probably the most unnatural thing that I could possibly use. And as I was researching arthritis, the idea of a heel strike, which of course you're taught to do back in the good old days, seemed to be exactly what you were saying that that just transmitted some rather impressive force upward. Whether your knee took it, or whether your hip took it, or both took it. You went up to your neck. That's true, right up to the neck. And so, you know, I said, you know, something's gotta give. The other thing, I have quote a wide foot, and you're right, all of these shoes cram you into a narrow footbed. There are some that are a little better than others, but yeah, but you're right. And it just seemed unnatural, and the things, so that's what led me to that. And so then you made the switch and? And that's what I wanna get into. It takes to me an adjustment. The first thing that I found happening was, I was running on my toes. And that turns out is a very smart thing to do. Even at distance. Sprinter obviously runs on their toes, but even at distance, toe running. Let me address that a little bit. Some people get the mistaken idea that they just need to land on their toes, and they'll still reach their foot out in front of their body and point their toes, which is the worst thing you could do. And so, it's really not so much about landing on your toes as much as landing with your foot more underneath your center of mass, underneath your body. And when you do that, it's impossible to land on your heel, but that doesn't mean that you keep your heel off the ground. You're just getting that, you're actually engaging your arch, which is the first line of defense, the strongest structure ever discovered is an arch. And no matter whether you have flat feet or high arches, that's still true. So that gives you that first line of defense. It gives you that first bit of feedback. That sets you up to have a nice strong spring for when you're running, but you also can let your heel come down naturally as well. But again, the key is having your foot being underneath you more, rather than just pointing your toes and landing on your toes. So I started using these street running. And then I decided, my wife and I do a lot of hiking in Italy. Well, actually around our homes and trail. And I found initially that the barefoot shoes took some getting used to, because I felt everything and I'm going, I'm not sure I like feeling everything, but over the years, I've noticed that that feeling everything gives me, particularly as I get older, an advantage because you're right. There is feedback that maybe my poor old brain needs now that if I was 40, I didn't need that feedback. No, you always need it, but just for slightly different reasons. And it's interesting, talking about you being older and needing the feedback could not be more true. I mean, look, I say this with a, it's going to sound a little cavalier or callous, but it's been eight years and I'm kind of over it. My dad is one of the millions of people who wore big thick shoes, had bad feedback, bad balance kind of shuffled, tripped on a little ledge in a store, fell down, broke his hip and died two weeks later. This is endemic. And we see this, you know, it blows my mind whenever I see people working with an elderly population and they start putting them in thicker and thicker shoes and you watch, they start shuffling and shuffling and walking slower and check this out. There's a bunch of research, started to come out of Duke a number of years ago, showing that if you walk really slowly, that's a high predictor of mortality over the next six months. And the slower you walk, the higher the probability you're going to die. Now, they didn't say why, but trip and fall is a big reason for that. And otherwise just, you know, the lack of mobility is a really big deal that people don't appreciate. So, but the feedback is also important because some of it's not going to your brain. Some of it's going to the base of your spinal cord for reflexes. So, you know, you step on a B, you don't have to think about pulling your foot off the ground, you just pull your foot off the ground. It's a reflex arc. And I have no proof for what I'm about to say, but I'll say it anyway. It seems that as I started spending more time barefoot and the products we are making that my reflex arc, the speed of that improved because things that were originally difficult are unpleasant for me to step on. And it seems like you and I have the same mentality. We just did a little more, too much too soon because what the hell? But things that were originally unpleasant to step on became totally fine. And it wasn't because I got calluses or thick skin. It was because, A, I was able to step off of something unpleasant more quickly. And B, my feet became more flexible and would just sort of bend around things as necessary. So there's definitely a transition period. We can talk about that. And, but the simple thing I can say about any sort of transition, I'm gonna use the arm and a cast analogy again, is when you get your arm out of a cast, you have two choices, never use it again, or do some strengthening for a little while and then it'll serve you the rest of your life. That's what we're talking about here, too, is what we're gonna talk about, the transition from what you're doing now to spending a little more time barefoot indoors or on mildly unpleasant surfaces to kind of wake up your nervous system or going into a shoe that gives you that barefoot-like experience after a little bit of time and it's different for everyone, your body will serve you better for the rest of your life. And how is that not worth it? Good point. Let's back up for a second. Let's dispel the myth that shoes have always had heels and that having heels in a shoe or a boot is normal and this is abnormal. I mean, shoes have always had heels, haven't they? Well, that was an easy myth to dispel. The answer is no. Okay, moving on. No, heels, I mean, there's a lot of arguments and debates about how heels evolved. Some was because of the people who were having shoes made for them in the early days of getting shoes made were like royalty and so, and many of them just wanted to be taller. Some that became a fashion thing. Some people say it was because people were riding horses, they needed something for their stirrups. I mean, there's lots and lots of reasons for it. All I can tell you is when it comes to athletic shoes in particular, I already gave you the reason. It was some doctors who just pulled something out of their butt and gave it to the most important shoemaker in the world at the time. Yeah, you can look at the Egyptian, look at the Greeks, the Egyptians, there aren't any heels. No, I say go to any place that doesn't have indoor plumbing you won't find heels in their shoes. That's a good point. All right, so getting back, so walking barefoot, particularly indoors is a great idea. I personally have tried barefoot outside. I don't enjoy it because I don't have enough callus to take those little things. Well, it's not about calluses because, and people think that it's all about building calluses, but if you find those of us who spend a lot of time barefoot outdoors, we don't have callus feet. The skin has gotten a little bit thicker, but that's not it. We're just a little more responsive and aware of what we're doing. Again, I'm not suggesting people do it. I just enjoy it, it's fun. I like the feeling, I get the feedback. I spend a lot of time barefoot and frankly, when I'm not barefoot, I wear mismatched colors in my shoes. So the other day, I was in Costco at the line for the pharmacy and the guy behind me says, hey, your shoes don't match. And the pharmacist, without looking up or missing a beat, says he's wearing shoes. So it's fun if you like it, if not, again, that's why we're like barefoot is ideal, but the reason that we have a business is for when it's not the most appropriate thing. We were talking off camera, but let's say that there's popularity in running shoes called zero drop shoes. Correct. And a lot of these zero drop shoes nevertheless have a ton of cushioning. Correct. Explain zero drop shoes to people who don't know what that means and go from there. Well, the simple thing, zero, the drop is the difference between the height of your heel and the height of your, the ball of your foot when you're standing. So a zero drop shoe means there's no difference. The ball of your foot is the same height as your heel or the heels at the same height as your ball of your foot, whichever way you want to see it. But as you said, you can still have a bunch of cushioning underneath a zero drop shoe and that creates all the problems that we just described. You lose the feeling, the shoe becomes stiffer, which inhibits motion and more feedback and balance and agility. And the higher you get off the ground, this is really simple. Let's just use stilts as an example. Stilts are hard to balance. Well, it's true even when your shoe is, you know, it doesn't have to be very high off the ground, but the higher it gets, the harder it is to balance. And some of the things they make to improve your balance, they'll flare the sole out, actually makes it harder to balance because the way your foot lands on that out, that flared sole changes the way your foot contacts the ground and can make it harder to adapt, especially if you're not getting that feedback. So it was an idea that it started out and sounded good, but there's a bunch of reasons why it doesn't pan out. The feedback being the number one thing, back to Irene Davis's research, she refers to shoes in, or minimalist shoes in two categories, minimalist and partial minimalist. And I asked her privately if she wasn't trying to be politically correct, if she would call them real minimalist and fake minimalist. And she said, yeah, pretty much. And the real, the difference is the shoes that still have that excessive amount of padding and it doesn't take very much. Again, limits the amount of feedback you're getting. So it makes it harder to make those gait changes. Again, this is about form, not footwear. It makes it harder to get that feedback that makes the gait changes that makes you let your, that makes it so that you can use your body more naturally, using your muscles, ligaments and tendons, the way they're supposed to be used. And so she says that those shoes are actually worse for you than a truly barefoot shoe because they're still letting you over stride, heel strike, put all that force into your body, not feel it, not make those gait changes. And here's the crazy part, most people doing that, they don't know they're doing it. I did some research with Dr. Bill, I was in the lab with Dr. Bill Sands, he was the former head of biomechanics for the US Olympic Committee. And we took a bunch of people who are even, they claimed that they were barefoot runners, but they were usually in like, you know, the five finger shoes. And there were certain versions of that five finger shoe that still had a bunch of padding. And we watched people who when they were in bare feet had perfect form. And when they put on even something that most people thought of as a barefoot shoe, those five finger shoes, suddenly they were over striding, heel striking, putting more force through their body. And the kick is they had no idea they were doing it. You and I have a friend who used to have five finger shoes. Hmm, huh, yeah, I think I know who we're referring to. So why, what's wrong with those shoes and how did you talk our mutual friend out of those shoes? Well, besides the fact that they stink. Yeah, well, in the early days when I started zero shoes and I sell people in five fingers, I said, two questions. When did they rip and how bad do they smell? And people had answers for both of those. So had those things fit my feet, I probably would have never started this company. But I have Morton's toe, which most people think of as meaning your second toe is longer than your first. It really means your first is too short. So be it. But regardless, they didn't fit my foot properly. So that talked me out of it. I have no problem with the way they look because I do a lot of weird things anyway. I don't have any normal bicycles. I have like a kick scooter and a elliptical bicycle and crazy stuff. So I don't mind that at all. I mean, I have this hair, clearly I don't care. So, but since they didn't fit my foot, I didn't have that option. And the, again, the issue is simply that if there's enough cushioning, it's the same as just having a shoe. The smell issue is an issue. The fit issue is an issue. There's one other thing I was gonna say. You know, some people, they just have an identity built around whatever they're doing. So our mutual friend, he referred to them as male birth control shoes. So, and I think the only other brand that can claim that is Crocs. And, but I think that works for both men and women for Crocs. And so it was the challenge, it was actually easy for him to switch from those to zero shoes. I just had to make him a pair because he's a size 16 and we only went up to size 15. So I said, let's give it a shot. I made a pair. He put them on me, called and said, this is all I'm gonna wear. Very good. Okay. We've been kind of talking, you're a runner. No, I'm a sprinter. Yeah, I'm sorry. I don't run. I apologize. Yeah. I go very fast in a straight line for a very short distance. That is very smart. Running, you're correct. Running is really bad for you and we won't take today to talk about that. Running is fine. Like, look, even on the track, I hear there's a thing at the end of each end of the track called, what are they called? Turns, is that what it is? I mean, I don't know, a GPS watch. So how am I supposed to do that? Aha. So, yeah, running a straight line. Yeah. So, but why, okay, I'm going about my everyday business and I'm in my suit. Why should I have a barefoot shoe just to walk around? Well, walking, standing, doing anything. Again, everything that makes a barefoot shoe, and let me grab one just to describe this. So, first, wider foot-shaped toe box. So your toes can spread and do what's natural. Low to the ground for better balance and agility. We don't elevate the heel. We don't know that thing called toe spring, which puts strain on your toes. They're super, super flexible. So, again, you can work, just roll it in a ball. There, again, the tread is there for traction and protection, but also just FYI, is a unique thing to us. When we decided to make shoes, most shoe companies say you need to replace your shoes every two to 500 miles. And I knew that was just about planned obsolescence. So, we approached our rubber manufacturer and said, we want a sole that can last for a long time. They said, but that's not what they do for regular shoes. We went, yeah, I know. That's why we want to do it. So, we back our soles with a 5,000-mile sole warranty, which just means they last for a really long time. Where that came from was our original sandals were inspired by the Tataramara Indians who were featured in the book Born to Run, who run in sandals made of tire scraps. And so, in the early days, people would say, how long are these sandals gonna last? And we'd say, I don't know. No one's ever worn out a pair. So, since we're inspired by tire sandals, we have a tire-like warranty for our shoes. So, the benefit is just improved balance, agility, mobility, and even strength. So, research from Dr. Sarah Ridge shows that just walking in a minimalist shoe builds foot-muscle strength as much as doing an actual foot exercise program. And interestingly, there's research showing if you do that foot exercise program and you run in regular shoes, your injury rate is reduced by 250% over people who didn't do the exercise program. Now, there's not a study yet that shows you can just walk in our shoes and run in whatever you want and have a 250% lower injury rate. But that thing in the middle of that equation is the same exercise program. So, walking shoes like zero shoes and to be totally transparent, the lead researcher said that you should get the same benefits from walking in zero shoes as this shoes they used in that study, which she didn't have hours at the time. So, walking in the shoes builds strength, building strength reduces injury risk. You do the math. For our female viewers, listeners, give me an argument to get them out of their heels. You know, I'll give you, I'll do it in a weird way. Wear your heels whenever you want, except if they're painful. And more, if you build up foot strength, you'll be able to tolerate them for those rare situations where you want them. That said, we have, you know, some, and we're making more shoes for women that are attractive. My wife was at a, she was in an event with one of the CEO of one of the biggest banks in the world and like a whole bunch of super rich white guys. She didn't know why she was there. But she was kind of embarrassed because she was wearing one of our kind of, you know, fun, pretty sandals. And she made a comment to the CEO's assistant who was the only other woman in the room, saying, I feel it kind of bad because of these sandals. And the woman says, are you kidding? I want a pair of those. So the comfort factor is huge. Building up strength will let you wear heels for those times you need heels. And that kind of covers it. I mean, I'm not going to, here's the thing. There's a time and a place for everything. I'm not going to talk people out of doing what they want to do 100% of the time. We have lots of people who've done that. In fact, over 60% of our customers own more than four pairs of our shoes. And I think the top 10% own over 20. So they've made the complete transition for everything they do. Because once you've experienced letting your body do what it's made to do naturally, it's kind of hard to go back. But there's times where you do it because you want to look a particular way or there's a particular thing you need to do. And that's cool. You want to be able to survive that better. All right, are these, so it's okay for me to wear these with a suit. I don't look geeky or anything like that. Dude, do you think I'm going to care if you look geeky? Oh, I care, I care. Well, we have a lot of people who wear a bunch of our things for a bunch of different reasons. All I can say is, let's see. In the end of February, we are launching a number of new products, including stuff that'll look even better with a suit. So the way our product line has grown from just a do-it-yourself sandal kit to now over 30 different styles of shoes, boots, and sandals that people wear for everything from taking a walk to running ultramarathons to climbing Kilimanjaro to going out dancing, is because customers have told us, I love the shoe that you made for this, but now I need a shoe for this. And one of the big requests we've got is what can I wear with a suit? And we have a number of black shoes or white shoes, but we're making a few more that are a little, one with, you know, really beautiful full grain leather and some vegan options as well that will look better in those situations. All right, I'm standing by. I'm standing by. Who knows a guy, hook you up. All right. Okay, we talked about, you know, getting, strengthening your ankles and your arches and all that. Are there exercises that are useful for, you know, strengthening your ankles and all? Yeah, there are many of them. What, again, just walking and or running will do more than almost anything else you can do. But once you kind of get into this, you find yourself doing stuff when you're just sitting around, when you're doing the dishes, when you're brushing your teeth. So rather than going into the giant list of exercises, if you search online for foot strengthening exercises, especially if you search online for foot strengthening exercises, BYU for Brigham Young University, because that's where they did that foot strengthening study. You'll find a number of exercises. Some of them are really simple, literally, just like squeeze your toes together as hard as you can, spread your toes apart as far as you can. That's a good one. For building up ankle strength, stand on one foot on the ball of your foot for as long as you can. Bounce up and down, jumping rope, really, really good for you, especially if you're going foot to foot instead of just doing both feet at the same time. There's an exercise called short foot, that's a really good one, where you want to imagine the ball of your big toe and your heel, you want to try to pull them together. Try to keep your toes as relaxed as you can and try to pull the ball of your big toe closer to your heel. It's an isometric thing. You'll get barely any motion, a couple of millimeters worth of motion, and your foot will probably cramp up, which means that you need to build strength. And so you can do that sitting, you can do that standing. And so that short foot exercise, in fact, if you just Google short foot, you'll find a bunch of people talking about that. That's also a really, really good one. Another thing that I just brought to mind, a lot of my female patients have bunions. And some of them go through bunionectomy, which is not a pleasant procedure. Actually, one of my nurse practitioners a few years ago did that and it is not fun. Is there any evidence that, first of all, there's a lot of evidence that these things occur because your foot has been crammed like that? Is there any evidence so far, or is there even a thought that getting your foot back in a broad spread will help this? So look, we are both scientifically minded people. I will be the first to confess that anecdotes do not equal data until you have a preponderance of anecdotal information, which is a data point. So what I can say is I'm not aware of any research yet that shows that just by getting out of constricting shoes and into something that lets your toes spread a little more or even using toes spreaders, you can find these silicone toes spreaders, definitely works or definitely works for everyone. I know there's a guy named Dr. Ray McClanahan, who's got a product called correct toes. And he's got a lot of, again, anecdotal information from his customers. There's another product from a company called Neboso, N-A-B-O-S-O, which means barefoot in check. They have a product similarly, and that company is owned and started by a surgical podiatrist named Dr. Emily Splickle. So, but I'm not aware of a longitudinal study that shows this. I can say personally, I didn't have big bunions, but I definitely had my first toe pushing in a little bit. You could definitely see that that joint right there was pushing out a little bit. And I was actually just looking at my feet the other day, noticing my big toes are like totally straight now, which I didn't do anything other than just use them. And it's, so again, the anecdotal data could not be more clear. It takes time. Not gonna happen overnight, but again, let's just go to the things that make sense. If squeezing your toes is bad, unsqueezing them can't be worse. And it's probably good. And doing a little, you know, doing some things to get that extra movement in there with toe spreaders or just doing those exercises to literally try and just spread your toes apart will be helpful. Just the more you're walking or the more you're running where you're allowing your toes to spread, that's gonna probably be the most beneficial thing. All right. You've been working at this a while now. I understand you're working on a new book titled, Change Your Shoes, Change Your Life. It is true. Are there any fascinating new studies from that book that you can share with our listeners today? My favorite studies are the ones that I mentioned that foot strengthening happens just from wearing and walking around in shoes like these and that foot strengthening can improve or reduce the risk of running injury. Those I absolutely love. But my favorite study is actually not about us. It came from that company, what did I call it, Mikey, was that the one? So a couple of years ago, they, because here's the thing, many people will say, well, if what you're doing is so much better, why aren't the big shoe companies doing it? And what I can tell you is what people who are CEOs or at the C level and a number of those companies, I can think of three off the top of my head, have said directly to us, what you're doing is legit. We just can't do it because it would be admitting that we've been lying for 50 years. They can't tell two stories. They can't tell the story of natural movement and the story of giant, giant padding and have anyone understand what's going on. But here's the kicker. They all know. And so that Mikey study is the proof that they know. So the study came out where they were testing their best selling running shoe against a new shoe they had developed. And the way they publicize the study, which has never been published, but I have a copy of it is, they said this new shoe reduces the risk of injury by 52%, which it did. But then you have to look at the actual numbers. In their best selling running shoe, in a 12 week study that they designed, over 30% of the people got injured in less than 12 weeks. In the new shoe, yeah, only 15% got injured. So let's call that one out of three versus one out of seven. Imagine you walk into a shoe store and you say, I'm looking for a good shoe for walking, running, hiking, whatever it is you do. They go, well, here's our best seller. FYI, over 30% of the people wearing this are gonna get injured in the next 12 weeks. It's like, oh, no, no, I don't want that one. It's right here. Yeah, wait, can I, do you have a better one? Well, here's one where we're only one out of seven people getting injured in 12 weeks. Don't you have one that doesn't injure me or makes me feel better? They go, yeah, and that's not what we do here. So, or imagine going, you know, someone says I'm gonna buy you dinner every night this week. You have a choice between two restaurants, one where you'll get food poisoning twice, one where you only get it once. Which one do you wanna go to? More amazing episodes just like this one watch now. One serving contains 55% of the phosphorus that you need and also about 50% of the recommended iron that you need.