Used shoes

I wear used shoes. I buy them for me AND for my children.

And if this horrifies you, I apologize. But the truth is, there are LOTS of people out there who buy used shoes, and we all sort of tip-toe around the people who say, “Maybe used clothes are okay, but you should NEVER buy used shoes,” or who say, “Shoes conform to the foot of the person who wore them last, and they’ll damage another persons’ feet.” If used shoes revolt you, you can stop reading here. I’m fine with you buying new shoes, honestly I am. You don’t have to live the way I do.

If you’re still reading this, then, I’ll assume you don’t think used shoes are child abuse, but maybe you’re plagued by people who tell you it is. The rest of this post is supposed to be a bit of oil on your troubled waters. This is going to be a long post because the urban legends surrounding used shoes are so pervasive that we Used-Shoers need a lot of support.

Here’s an important caveat: from everything that I have read and heard about, the real shoe problem is ill-fitting shoes, not used shoes. Some people (like my niece) have feet with special needs, and the only reasonable way to accommodate those needs is by getting special shoes, which are necessarily new. Other people develop injuries from wearing badly fitting or inappropriate shoes (high heels are terrible for your knees, whether they’re new or used). I am NOT saying that any-old shoe is fine. What I AM saying is that used shoes aren’t inherently worse than new ones at fitting right.

To understand the health risks involved with used shoes, let’s compare it to two other issues we know about: processed foods and electronic entertainment. I’ll describe how we get health information about all three (shoes, food, and TV/video) in a variety of ways.

Anecdote.

One way we get quick information about the world around us is through stories about people we know (or about people who know people we know). Anecdote isn’t the most reliable way of knowing the world, but it’s the most immediate and personal. Have you ever known a person who

• got cavities from eating too much candy or drinking too much soda? 
• watched TV/played videos instead of playing outdoors, and was physically out of shape? 
• had foot problems because of used shoes? 

For me, the answer is “yes” to the first two (many times) and “no” to the third. I do know someone who had foot problems because his parents only bought him new shoes once every other year, and as a result he often wore shoes the wrong size. But he never wore pre-owned shoes; the problem was the size. Your answers might be different than mine, of course. That’s the problem with anecdote.

Popular media

Newspapers, magazines, and TV give us a broader glimpse of the world than our circle of friends can. I don’t watch TV, and I don’t know what newspapers or magazines you read, so I’ll choose two magazines that are somewhat more numbers-based than what most people read.

My Health Insurance company sends me out an e-newsletter that tries its best to keep me healthy.

• When I searched for “processed food” I immediately got links to “high blood cholesterol and triglycerieds” and “Diverticulitis”. 
• When I searched for “video games”, I got 12 results, including articles on “weight control”, “physical activity”, “epilepsy”, and “stress”. 
• When I searched “used shoes”, I got nothing. 
• When I searched for "new shoes", I got this.

Foot pain

Most foot pain is caused by shoes that do not fit properly or that force the feet into unnatural shapes (such as pointed-toe, high-heeled shoes). Women are at higher risk than men for severe foot pain, probably because of high-heeled shoes. Wear well-padded shoes with open toes or a deep toe box (the part of the shoe that surrounds the toes).          

Answers from Dr. Hart

... the first few times you exercise in your new shoes, but it is a good start.Your own biomechanics -- ...        

The latest Consumer Reports has a "you asked and our doctors answered" page. One question was, "What is the single most important thing I can do to improve my health?" None of the doctors talked about shoes. One answered simply, “Eat more fruits and vegetables and fewer processed foods." Another began, “Practice prevention consistently. A good diet, exercise, and stress reduction . . . "

In other words, giving up processed breakfast cereal and video games makes a big difference in health. The health dangers of used shoes was nowhere on this list.

Authority

Our close friends and newspaper reporters (even Consumer Reports writers) aren’t health experts. What do the professionals say?

The Journal of the American Medical Association lists articles by current medical researchers.  Here are the numbers of hits I got on various  searches:

• "processed foods":  33 hits
• "video games": 46 hits
• "used shoes":  3 hits
  
  What were the used shoes articles about? One article is about how to sterilize shoes (damp shoes can grow fungus; whether they're new or used, dry those shoes out!) The other two articles describe how the researchers used shoes in their research: for example, the researchers “used shoes around the ankle and plaster of paris around the leg to stablilize the patient.” None of these articles talk about damage caused by wear patterns in used shoes.

The American Podiatric Medical Association has a page on "Foot Health".   Their sections on “Children’s Shoes”, “Women’s Shoes”, and “Men’s shoes” all boil down to this: wear shoes that fit your foot and that fit the activity you’re doing.  They do have one section that says this:

Shoe Care 

For longer service, keep shoes clean and in good repair. Avoid excessive wear on heels and soles. Give your shoes a chance to breathe—don’t wear the same pair two days in a row (you prolong the life of shoes by rotating their use). Never wear hand-me-down shoes (this is especially important for children).

Is this last-minute-warning against hand-me-down shoes the evidence the new-shoers are looking for? To me, this still smacks of urban-legendism. There is absolutely no rationale given for this advice. It’s buried in shoe care, not foot care. It comes after “don’t wear the same pair two days in a row” – a piece of advice that hasn’t made it into the popular consciousness, for sure. I include this line here because I’m trying to be fair, but I’m not buying it.

The absence of activism

Finally, a big piece of evidence about the safety of used shoes comes from what you do NOT see. In the case of processed foods, you can read all the time about activists getting het-up: people suing fast food chains, lobbying schools to include vegetables, opening farmers’ markets in urban areas, pressuring McDonald’s to include apples in addition to processed fries.

In the case of electronic entertainment, you read about school districts worried about video games, about volunteer groups forming school-aged exercise clubs in response to video sloth, about people suing video game makers for violent acts that (they claim) arose as a result of people playing those games.

Goodwill and Salvation Army sell lots of used shoes. As far as I know, nobody is suing them for resulting injuries. Nobody is sponsoring “give a kid a pair of new shoes” program in urban schools to counteract used-shoe damage. Nobody has started a charity to rehabilitate people who grew up wearing used shoes.

*****
 All my shoes, like all my clothes, are from yard sales or from friends.  I've worn used running shoes for about two decades now, and my knees are still just fine.   I ran my last couple of races -- including a 10K and a half marathon -- in my two-year-old, $1-at-a-yard-sale, hot pink running shoes.  (I didn't come close to winning the races, though.  No promises there).

Here's a nearly-new pair of shoes after one month of wear by my younger son.  He loves these, but he's not wearing them again anyway.

My two sons are hard on shoes.  Really, really hard.  They can destroy a pair of shoes in a month if they're feeling especially peppery, and they have not recently managed to keep a pair of shoes for as long as three months.  (New shoes last no longer than used shoes on my boys, just in case you're wondering). For me, having a large pile of shoes ready and waiting is a crucial part of my clothing strategy.  I might be nuts enough to squirt their feet into used shoes, but at least they always have access to a pair of shoes that is in decent condition and the right size.  And to me, that's what matters most.

Through yard-saling and hand-me-downs, I have a large collection of shoes in good condition to move my sons into.  I spent about $20 on these 22 pairs of shoes.