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Old 04-20-2009, 05:20 AM   #10 (permalink)
The_Jazz
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PonyPotato View Post
The_Jazz: If you read the article, you'll see that it's not about how people didn't die from disease before 150 years ago, it's about how athletic shoes aren't actually good for you. They actually weaken the foot, increasing the chance of injury, and don't decrease the chance of injury overall even though they're super technological.

pai_mei: I saw this article on reddit earlier today and was considering posting it here. You took a different twist on it than I would have, but it's the same article nonetheless.
I actually did read the article. Honestly, it was nothing new. It's been a very well known fact that runners who grow up running barefoot are able to run barefoot over most surfaces with a minimal amount of injuries and that they aren't as prone to lots of foot injuries, like plantars facitis. This is 40 year-old science, and probably older. After all, Abebe Bikila won the marathon at the Rome Olympics in 1960 with no shoes.

But if you're not going to wear shoes when you run, you need to start doing that before adolesence. When your feet grow, connective tissue changes, growing denser in spots where it's needs and slimming out where it's not. Given the option, I would have run barefoot in every race I ever ran (I tried it in 2 with mixed results) to save the weight, but it wasn't an option.

But I also read the OP and think that using this article to try to argue a societal return to the hunter/gatherer model is ridiculous. Especially when the reporter who wrote the story linked in the OP is a complete fucking moron who doesn't know what is and isn't protein. So, if Pai Mei's starting point is going to be with an incredibly flawed article written by someone who has some basic facts right but flunks on many of the details, it doesn't help the following argument.

Quote:
Originally Posted by pai mei View Post
It's not about running it's about lifestyle. People living in what we call "nature" and moving around all day are healthy people. They can live long, not die at 20 years after a very hard life, like everyone imagines. Yes life was hard, for one of us if you teleport yourself among them you will find it very hard.
Well, there were certainly people who lived longer than 20 years but not the so-called "average person". Infant mortality was much, much higher and those that survived to adulthood did not live very long past that. And of course life was hard - it continues to be hard for all of the hunter-gatherers left in the world. That is, by definition, a very hard lifestyle that cuts life short.

Quote:
Originally Posted by thingstodo View Post
I think our current lives are filled with chemicals and a terrible atmoshpere and we sit around too much these days. We prolong our lives through great medical care. We also prolong our lives because we don't have to live each moment to survive.
Ding, ding, ding.
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