Market Harborough Chiropractor on MBT Trainers

Market Harborough Chiropractor on MBT trainers
Written By davecasey6719@gmail.com, On September 2, 2013
Market Harborough Chiropractor agrees with latest research on low back pain research

£ 250 Mbt trainers favoured by stars such as Madonna, Paris Hilton and Gwyneth Paltrow, convinced by promises that they improve posture and reduce back pain, have been found by a recent scientific study to provide no benefit at all, and in some cases make problems worse.

The findings are especially embarrassing for the company behind the footwear because it funded the research.

MBT stands for Masai Barefoot Technology and the shoes have a curved “rocker” sole which is said to minic the effect of walking without footwear, but after almost two decades since they were launched scientists have failed to confirm these claims. There has never been any evidence in the literature to support the manufactures claims. They provide no benefits what so ever for people with back pain. These findings only add to the woes of MBT, coming just 18 months after the swiss parent company filed for bankuptcy.

As with many products sold directly to the general public persuasive advertising only suggests that use of this product or that products “may” help lower back pain.

At specialist clinics such as Active Chiropractic Clinics we see people time and time again disappointed by such products. While many people swear by them the reality is that back pain is caused by complex mechanisms and there will never be a cure-all treatment to fix back pain. It takes time to investigate the cause of an individuals back pain and then decide on treatment appropriate to that individual. It takes many years of training to understand why we suffer from back pain and decide the best way to treat that person.

You can always depend on the big marketing companies to spoon-feed you false information, just to sell you more of their junk.
This not only applies to trainers sold to “help” with back pain. Science and sceptical runners are catching up with something the Tarahumara Indians have known for ever: your naked feet are fine on their own. According to a growing body of clinical research, those expensive running shoes you’ve been relying on may be worse than useless: they could be causing the very injuries they’re supposed to prevent.

Perhaps the best research in the field has been going on for hundreds of years in a maze of canyons in northern Mexico. There, the reclusive Tarahumara tribe routinely engage in races of 150 miles or more, the equivalent of running the London Marathon six times in the same day. Despite this extreme mileage the Tarahumara are somehow immune to the injuries that plague the rest of the running world.

Out here in the non-Tarahumara world, where we have access to the best in sports medicine, training innovations and footwear, up to 90 per cent of all marathoners are injured every year. The Tarahumara, by contrast, remain spry and healthy deep into old age.

So how do the Tarahumara protect their legs from all that pounding? Simple – they don’t. They don’t protect and, most critically, they don’t pound. When the Tarahumara aren’t barefoot, they wear nothing more cushioned than thin, hard sandals fashioned from discarded tire treads and leather thongs. In place of artificial shock absorption, they rely on an ancient running technique that creates a naturally gentle landing. Unlike the vast majority of modern runners, who come down heavily on their foam-covered heels and roll forward off their toes, the Tarahumara land lightly on their forefeet and bend their knees, as you would if you jumped from a chair.

This ingenious, easy-to-learn style could have a profound effect on runners, not to mention the multi-billion dollar running-shoe industry. Astonishingly, there’s no evidence that any of this technology does anything, which may explain why Nike ads never explain what, exactly, those $190 shoes are supposed to do.

In a 2008 research paper for the British Journal of Sports Medicine, Dr Craig Richards, a physician at the University of Newcastle in Australia, revealed that after scouring 30 years’ worth of studies, he couldn’t find a single one that demonstrated that running shoes made you less prone to injury.

So if shoes aren’t the solution, could they be the problem? That’s what Dr Daniel Lieberman, the head of the evolutionary anthropology department at Harvard, began to wonder. Humans, after all, are the only creatures that voluntarily cover their feet, and we’re also the only creatures known to suffer from corns, bunions, hammer-toes and heel pain.

In Germany, meanwhile, the world’s leading researcher in human connective tissue, Dr Robert Schleip at the University of Ulm, began a experiment to see whether he could end his own battle with plantar fasciitis, a vexing heel pain that is almost impossible to cure fully.

“If you encase the foot in thick shoes,” Schleip says, “you not only lose ground awareness, you limit your natural elasticity.” Schleip began slipping out of his shoes to run barefoot through the parks of Berlin. Soon, his heel pain vanished, never to return.

The public fall victim to the advertising industry without seeking professional help. As chiropractors we see this all the time when it comes to back pain. They would rather listen to advice from the next door neighbor or a friend than ask someone that treats back pain everyday of the week. It makes it hard work to educate people when there is so much bad advice out there when it come to back pain.