Toe-tal recall - What on Earth are our toes actually for?

When viewed through an evolutionary or naturalistic lens, to walk, run and move barefoot is, of course, the default human condition. Any alteration of this is an alteration of not just millions of years of bipedal hominid function, but hundreds of millions of years of natural selection’s honing and refining of foot structure. The 2 papers featured in this section are, first, The effects of dorso-lumbar motion restriction on the ground reaction force components during running, by Moreley & Traum, and, second, Effect of spinal stabilization exercise on dynamic postural control and visual dependency in subjects with chronic non-specific low back pain by Salvati et al. The relevance of foot and, in particular, toe function, to these two papers will become clear as the editorial unfolds. After researching evolutionary and comparative anatomy, and applying concepts from it clinically, such as barefoot conditioning, for around a decade, when this author first saw the commercial footwear product “Vibram Fivefingers” shortly after its 2006 market release in the US, he was inspired to both purchase a pair and, after a few days of use, to write to Vibram to ask if they would like their product featured as a viable rehabilitation tool in a Rehabilitation chapter that was being written in Leon Chaitow’s Naturopathic Physical Medicine (Elsevier Churchill-Livingstone, 2008). Vibram, who had developed the shoe for sailing and perhaps walking had no idea their product could provide any potential benefit from a medical, rehabilitation or conditioning perspective; so they agreed to have them featured, but asked for some references for these benefits. The end result was an opportunity for this author to serve as distributor of Vibram Fivefingers to the UK market. As a consequence e for obvious reasons e a question that has been repeatedly been encountered is what are the toes actually for? Are they a necessary part of our foot function or some kind of evolutionary remnant we no longer need? It is clear that they are not utilised much in most footwear or sportswear. Most anthropologists or holistically-orientate biomechanists would tell you that the toes are, indeed,