2022 Mid Wales Diary

Mid Wales Diary

David Holland

BSc(Hons) Pod-Med, CBiol, CSci, FFPM-RCPS(Glasg).

Building work has been moving apace at Wyvern - two load-bearing walls knocked out recently, which has meant us living and cooking in one room temporarily. Upstairs is unaffected so we still have bedrooms, “facilities”, and an office - to which I and the dog beat a hasty retreat as soon as the builders arrive - around 8am each day.

I was delighted to read, some months ago, that intelligence may not be pre-determined by our genes after all. This was in the context of a Nobel prize-winner stating, back in 2007, that Africans were less intelligent than Europeans. That theory harkens back to some races supposedly being more intelligent than others. There is absolutely no proof that this is so, and he later suggested he had been misquoted. The information came from an excellent source - the 2019 book A Short History of Humanity - by Professor Johannes Krause, and Thomas Trappe. A logical extension of this discussion - if intelligence is not pre-determined by our genes, does a fixed intelligence quotient - IQ - actually exist? Psychologists would say that it does, but they have a vested interest since they ‘discovered” IQ, and monitor IQ testing. If IQ does not exist, then do we, or our children, have the potential to be highly intelligent? How did our early life experiences - good or bad - which would include schooling, affect our understanding, willingness to learn, and ambition?

Johannes Krause is Professor of archaeology and paleogenetics at the University of Tubigen, and Co-Director of the new Max Plank Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena. He is an established international authority in the field of archeogenetics. Barefoot running is a topic I take professional interest in. Podiatrists in general are not in favour of barefoot running, largely because of unsubstantiated claims of less running injuries made by Christoper McDougall in his 2009 book - the “barefoot bible” - Born to Run.

Barefoot running by those who choose not to wear shoes, as opposed to habitual barefoot running by indigenous peoples, is not new. Olympic athletes Emil Zatopek, Abebe Bikila, and Zola Budd all ran barefoot - in competition too. They ran barefoot because they were used to it. Not because it was healthier, or would possibly lead to less injuries. In fact, most of us can run barefoot if we choose to. The fossil record going back over one million years shows that our hunter-gatherer ancestors possessed highly-effective bipedal ability. Surely it seems improbable that evolution would suddenly go into reverse, and drive humans towards less effective bipedalism in which the wearing of footwear became necessary in order to walk and run?

If you or your patients want to try running barefoot (it does feel good) do so by all means, but not on concrete. A mix of supporting surfaces is much better for running - barefoot or shod. Concrete surfaces are hard, and uniformly flat.

Let’s face it - some of our patients need to wear orthotics just to be comfortable on concrete.