Ben Greenfield [00:00:00]: My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast.

Emily Splichal [00:00:04]: I cannot do a complete bunion assessment without looking at X-rays because I have to measure the angle between the first and the second metatarsal. That is a subtle but very important distinction because it helps us understand. Well, are bunions reversible? Can I reverse a bunion with exercises, and Toe Spacers, conservatively? Or can I only reverse a bunion through surgery?

Ben Greenfield [00:00:34]: Fitness, nutrition, biohacking, longevity, life.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:39]: Optimization, spirituality, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Live show.

Ben Greenfield [00:00:46]: Are you ready to hack your life? Let's do this. Hey, if you're listening in and you have feet, this is going to be a pretty important podcast episode for you. My guest on this show is somebody who's been on the show before. She is somebody who appeared in an episode called Barefoot Stong, Unlock the Secrets to Movement Longevity, as you can guess. As the name implies, we talked about her role as a functional podiatrist and human movement specialist, especially when it comes to your feet, because they're so important for everything else that happens from the bottom up. Her name is Emily Splichal. Did I do that right? Emily? Did I say your last name right?

Emily Splichal [00:01:35]: You did. You did.

Ben Greenfield [00:01:36]: Nailed it. All right, cool. And you guys should definitely listen to my first episode with Emily, which I'll put at BenGreenfieldlife.com/dremily. That's Ben Greenfieldlife.com. dr. emily. But she's basically a human movement specialist, a podiatrist, big leader in the realm of foot science and rehabilitation and also movement in general. She has a really good eye for movement dysfunction, for neuromuscular control, for gait improvement, and for fixing up your feet.

Ben Greenfield [00:02:11]: She did her early training as a surgeon at the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York. Now she just basically teaches people how to fix their feet and beyond. So, Emily, welcome back to the show.

Emily Splichal [00:02:25]: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be back.

Ben Greenfield [00:02:28]: Yeah. And in our last podcast, obviously, we talked a lot about the feet. So right now, as we're about to start this show, check this out. You actually can't see what I'm on, but I'm going to be curious if you've heard about this. So I'm going to start walking while I'm talking to you because I've been walking a lot more during my podcast, and I'm on this surface that's like this soften foam kind of treadmill. It's called a walk elution. Have you seen this thing before?

Emily Splichal [00:02:51]: I actually know the company, they had spoken to us about putting the boso on it, so, yes, I do know that company well.

Ben Greenfield [00:02:58]: Okay, so explain to me what that would mean. Putting the boso on it.

Emily Splichal [00:03:01]: Yes. So the. The walking treadmills or the standing desk treadmills are actually one of the best things that you could be doing, because we were designed to move. We are not designed to sit, and we're not designed to. So the act of being static or stasis in one place is really where we start to get stress in our body. So walking at a very slow pace, which is what you're doing. So you could still have a conversation or do work, is actually how your fascial system and your nervous system was designed. We are designed to move.

Emily Splichal [00:03:31]: So imagine if you were barefoot with the Naboso material across that top of the treadmill, and you would be stimulating your nerves and strengthening your muscles, waking up your brain. It's all great stuff.

Ben Greenfield [00:03:46]: Okay, so, first of all, here, I'll hold this up. See that? I am barefoot. I'm always barefoot on this treadmill, but it's got this, like, super soft, plushy foam surface on it, so it kind of, like, you know, stretches and strengthens my feet while I'm walking on it. But the Naboso, I'd love for you to explain how that proprioceptive technology works, because I have your mat in my sauna, but I will sometimes wear these socks. I think you sent them to me, and they've got the same little proprioceptive triggers inside the sock. Those are the boso socks, right?

Emily Splichal [00:04:22]: Absolutely. So all the products by Naboso, just in case that the listeners have no idea what we're talking about right now. It is a product line that I developed five years ago, and I. All of the products have these tiny little pyramids on them, and those little pyramids, are about 1 mm tall, one and a half millimeters tall. So they're small across the entire surface of the sock, the mat, the ball, whatever product you're using, is stimulating the nerves in the bottom of the feet. By stimulating those nerves, which are very special nerves, you wake up foot awareness, and postural awareness, and you wake up your foot muscles. There's actually 26 small muscles in the bottom of our feet that we have to wake up and strengthen. And then it improves circulation, and it's a really good form of foot recovery.

Emily Splichal [00:05:11]: So you get all these incredible benefits by stimulating the nerves in the bottom of the feet.

Ben Greenfield [00:05:17]: What do you think about nail boards or this acupressure? Well, they actually are nail boards. A company called I Think Gravity Mind, sent me some of these things. You're supposed to stand on them to improve some of these same proprioceptive cues that you're talking about. But what's your take on nail boards?

Emily Splichal [00:05:35]: Yeah, so nail boards, I would think of it as a nail board that is not replacing Naboso. They're actually targeting the nervous system. Very different. Naboso is targeting more your movement nerves whereas nail boards are more the autonomic nervous system. So regulating, let's say acupressure points, regulating mindfulness, maybe bringing you into a parasympathetic state. That's more of what it's playing with. So both are awesome. I've actually been really curious to try them.

Emily Splichal [00:06:06]: So let me know how they are.

Ben Greenfield [00:06:08]: Yeah, they get a little boring because I just kind of stand there and I don't know, I'm not a fan of just like standing there with my eyes closed on the nail board. I do use the acupressure mat sometimes you can lay on. I find those are very relaxing for something like a nap. And then I wear your socks and I use the mata in my sauna. But me and my brothers grew up in North Idaho, kind of like barefoot, homeschooled, dirty hippies. We had this long gravel driveway. We'd walk up and down that driveway, because we had to take the garbage can down and there's like a quarter mile long driveway. We had a garbage can down there for garbage days.

Ben Greenfield [00:06:46]: And we go for a walk down to the neighbors to hang out with them. And we did a lot of walking, but a lot of it was on gravel. So I would imagine there's probably a case to be made. Like if you live in an area where you've just got like an outside yard with rocks, with gravel, you know, maybe you're near a beach or a riverbed where you can walk on rocks. Like actually embracing that and trying to throw some challenges at your feet every day.

Emily Splichal [00:07:12]: 100%. That is. Again, I would look at it more autonomic because it's a little bit of like a mind over matter. So how can I relate to the stimulus? A lot of people have defensiveness to stimulus and they would be what would be considered tactically defensive and they actually get a systemic response, a sympathetic systemic response to stimuli. That's not good because then that creates dysregulation. They're now in fight or flight because of a stimulus and that's not good. So by introducing things like walking on gravel, and nail board, you could ease into the nail board, but you're actually desensitizing that defensiveness, and that then can be associated with emotional regulation. There's a lot of intercrossing between stimuli, movement, stimuli emotion, stimuli, and cognition.

Emily Splichal [00:08:08]: So it's all, I think everyone should be bringing in stimulation of their feet every day.

Ben Greenfield [00:08:13]: All right, I have a great idea. I'm going to duct tape these nail boards to my feet and just basically use them to walk around. That way I can move with the nails.

Emily Splichal [00:08:22]: There you go.

Ben Greenfield [00:08:23]: So the thing that I've been getting asked a lot about lately, this is even something that I've had to deal with a few times over the past few years. I don't know if it's getting old, I don't know if it's all the little foot injuries I sustained back when I used to race Spartans on all sorts of undulating terrain and occasionally step on rocks and throw my toes this way and that. But specifically, the big toe is something that I've become increasingly aware of when it comes to its importance. And also, I've seen a lot of people have issues with their big toes. So I would love to get into that with you first, just by asking, what's the importance, what's the actual degree of importance of the big toe and big toe mobility or strength or however you would define it?

Emily Splichal [00:09:12]: Absolutely. So I. Obviously, a lot of the focus is on the big toe, but I want to first talk about all of our toes. And when I talk about foot strength, the strength of a foot is really based off of your toe strength. So when people are all about training their feet, they want to squat from the ground up. The foot is very trendy right now, so there's a lot of focus on how to strengthen the foot and what are the exercises. I put a lot of my attention into the digits or into the toes, and that's because your toes play a very important role in how you balance. If you do not have what's called toe flexor strength, that's really what we're talking about, is toe flexor strength, your ability to anchor your toes into the ground.

Emily Splichal [00:09:55]: That affects your balance, that affects the way that you push off every time you take a step. So that's going to affect power, force, acceleration, vertical jump. Your digits are linked to all of that. So when I talk about athletics, very important. When I talk about reducing falls, very important. So it's at its baseline, your digits are very important. Now, of all the digits, the big toe is obviously the most important because it houses three times the strength of, of the little toes. So most of it's going to be rooted in that.

Emily Splichal [00:10:28]: And a fun fact is that, remember I said there are 26 muscles in the bottom of the feet. 40% of that muscle volume, 40% of that muscle volume is focused around the big toe, which means that is really where that power is coming from. And even the tendons, your flexor hallucis, longest big toe versus flexor digitorum longus little toes, have, again, three times the strength of the other tendons. So it's very important.

Ben Greenfield [00:11:00]: Real quick, the flexion piece is the reason that the flexion of the toe, the ability to kind of, like, grip the ground with the toe or kind of, like, drive it down. Is that more important or something you're talking about more than extension? Because we're naturally pushed into extension when we're walking, whereas it takes a little bit more mindfulness to engage in the flexion component.

Emily Splichal [00:11:23]: Absolutely. 100%. I'm so glad you said that. So we have to. We actively push our toes into the ground when we walk. You are essentially rolling through the digits. So for the listeners, so it makes sense, do, like a calf raise. And if you do a calf raise and you look down at your foot, that is a push off position or what's called a rigid lever.

Emily Splichal [00:11:47]: When you're in that position, your toes are extended, but it's not your extensors that are extending your toes. It is passive, which is what you were saying. It's passive. What keeps you stable in that lever or that calf-raised position is your flexors, which have to be anchoring or pulling you into the ground. So I'm so glad you said that, because sometimes people will say, look how I lift my toes off of the ground, and they'll just stand there and lift their toes up and say, look at my strength or look at my range of motion. That does not transfer to how we walk. And I never do that assessment on patients in my office. I'm much more concerned about the flexion action.

Ben Greenfield [00:12:32]: Yeah, I was kind of shocked when I tried an exercise in which you're supposed to almost, you know, like playing the piano with your toes. Lift your toes off of the ground. Right. Extension of the toes. And even though I engage in passive extension a ton. Right. Because I take, like, 15,000 steps a day, and so the toes are constantly being extended by the ground. My ability to actively extend my toes and lift them off the ground was shockingly ineffective.

Ben Greenfield [00:13:01]: It was very difficult exercise for me to do. Is that common?

Emily Splichal [00:13:04]: It is, and it's not something that I would then be very concerned about your lack of ability to do that. You could consider a lot of those, like toe yoga exercises as brain games. That's how I consider it. That's very different than an exercise that is transferring directly to a sport or to an action during walking or something like that. So it's not that doing that exercise you did is not worth the time. I just want people to understand why are we doing something. Is it to connect to your feet to create that mind-muscle? Sure. That's great. I know people are very non-compliant when it comes to foot exercises, so I'm very specific on what I recommend.

Emily Splichal [00:13:49]: Based off of transfer to gait or to walking, that's usually what I look.

Ben Greenfield [00:13:53]: At, and that's where flexion, active flexion would be probably the place to put more of your emphasis.

Emily Splichal [00:14:01]: Perfect. 100%.

Ben Greenfield [00:14:02]: Okay. All right. Got it. So with the big toe or really with toe flexion in general, what are some ways that we can do that?

Emily Splichal [00:14:12]: So one is through a forward lean. This is actually one of my favorite ways to teach people how to get into their flexors or their toast rings. And for a forward lean, you would just stand up with your feet shoulder-width apart. I would have you find a neutral position, so you would find your tripod. Lift your toes, and spread them out wide. Rotate just ever so slightly externally into your hips so you can neutralize your foot or find a base. Stay nice and tall. Arms by your side.

Emily Splichal [00:14:39]: Imagine that you are stiff as a board. Say stiff as a board. And you're gonna lean your body forward. You're gonna slightly lean and then go back to a vertical position. Slightly lean, go back vertically. Do that a couple of times. Every time you lean your body forward slightly, even your toes are going to anchor into the ground. And what that's doing is that's activating a postural reflex.

Emily Splichal [00:15:02]: This is a reflex in your nervous system so that you do not fall on your face, and it is protective. So by doing forward lean, you can get your foot to activate without even thinking about anything related to your foot. I love to use this for people who are new to strengthening their feet because they don't have that connection yet. Then I would have someone do that same toe activation without leaning their body forward. Essentially, that's the progression. Can you do that without leaning? Yes, I can consciously do that. Great. Can you now do that on one leg? Great.

Emily Splichal [00:15:38]: And now we're progressing into what's called the short foot. The short foot is the king or queen of all foot exercises. But the way that I teach short foot, which is pushing the toes into the ground, is that you have to cue the breath because your diaphragm is connected to your feet. So every time you push your toes down, you exhale. So that toes down, exhale is essentially coordinating your foot-to-core integration. And this is where a lot of my work focuses on. The other part that's connected to your feet in your diaphragm is your pelvic floor. So you would need to essentially lift your pelvic floor while you exhale.

Emily Splichal [00:16:20]: And while you push your toes into the ground. That's one of the best ways to start to get into your toe flexors. And then the third way is essentially trained toe flexion in a lever. So your foot is, or your ankle is plantar flexed, and your toes are extended just like that calf raise position. And can you push your toes into the ground into that position? Because that's actually transferring to how we walk, how you do a jump, different techniques like that.

Ben Greenfield [00:16:50]: Okay, so the part about exhaling while I engage with toe flexion, kind of like root these toes into the ground using some of the cues that you've just described makes sense. You also said, to lift the pelvic floor. What does that mean exactly?

Emily Splichal [00:17:07]: So, our pelvic floor, the base of your pelvis, is an anti-gravity muscle. So this very fascially dense muscle, which is part of posture, plays an important role in how we resist gravity. So when you lift the pelvic floor, um, very, very simply, it would be like a kegel. But that's not correct. I thought you could think like a kegel. It's more integrated than a kegel. But if you lift the pelvic floor, and I will teach people how to do this, that is coordinated with an exhalation. This is based off of.

Emily Splichal [00:17:44]: You could think of different domes in the body, and your diaphragm is a dome, and then your pelvic floor is another dome, and they rise and lift with each other. So it's almost like a sinusoidal wave from school. Hopefully, people remember that. Right. So we're essentially rising up and rising down or lowering down. So we're kind of riding that wave in synchrony between the diaphragm and the pelvic floor. When we inhale, our diaphragm actually drops. That's part of why your belly rises when you inhale.

Emily Splichal [00:18:19]: You also want to have a relaxation of the pelvic floor. You're not letting go of the pelvic floor, but you allow your pelvic floor to drop a little bit, and then when you exhale, your diaphragm lifts, and then your pelvic floor will lift. And that's essentially how you're doing this, in rhythm, if you want to get your feet part of that. And the listeners can try this. When you push your toes down, your arch lifts. So instead of memorizing what I'm saying, I want people to logically connect and say, okay, toes push down. My arch, which is kind of like a dome, lifts. Okay? So when I engage my pelvic floor, it lifts.

Emily Splichal [00:19:06]: When I exhale, my diaphragm lifts. So if I stack the rising of the domes, that makes sense, they go together. And then when I relax, I inhale, I relax the pelvic floor, I relax my foot. Essentially, all those domes are relaxing down. And then I exhale, push my toes down, all the domes rise, and that's how you find stabilization in your system.

Ben Greenfield [00:19:32]: So if I wanted to vastly oversimplify this, I could simply say exhale and engage with toe flexion. And upon exhaling, I'm automatically, as long as I'm exhaling properly, going to cause that dome of the diaphragm to lift, the dome of the pelvic floor to lift. And as I'm driving those toes into flexion, that'll automatically cause the arch to rise. So if I was going to focus on just two things, what makes the most sense to me is exhale with toe flexion.

Emily Splichal [00:20:04]: Absolutely. Start there. And then, like when I work with an athlete, once they get that, they get that, they get that is programmed, then I can get more specific because what I do want to emphasize is that the part of the pelvic floor that connects to the foot, and in this stack that we're talking about is your posterior pelvic floor. So that's your levator ani. You have to be able to differentiate and say, okay, when I push my toes down, bone, I felt my levator ani lift, but that's like phase two. I need you first here to kind of get the coordination between the breath and the feet.

Ben Greenfield [00:20:44]: Now, the levator ani, which muscle is that for people who might not be in, you know, as intimately familiar with anatomy as you are?

Emily Splichal [00:20:52]: Yeah. So your levator ani, which is your posterior pelvic floor. Your pelvic floor, the base of your pelvis has a front and a back. The back of your pelvic floor is your levator ani. That would be imagining stopping your poo. So let's say if you were just like, boom, do it right. You're like, okay, I feel something happening in the back door. Right? There's actually a lift.

Emily Splichal [00:21:13]: That's what your Levator ani does. And why it's so important to connect to that muscle is because your levator ani, myofascially or fascially, connects into your glute mats. So if you want to be accessing your glutes and as much power out of your glutes, you want to understand how to pull your posture, pelvic floor into that muscle.

Ben Greenfield [00:21:35]: That makes sense. Okay, so basically, think about instead of a kegel, stopping the flow of urine, activating your levator ani would be more like stopping the flow of poo.

Emily Splichal [00:21:47]: Yes. And then could you do this? So the way that I do this as an example that people can play around with is, let's say you're doing a squat. I'm doing a bat squat called a squat. You're going down into the bottom of the squat, so you're loaded. And then at the bottom of the squat, push your toes into the floor, because you have to anchor your system before you push that load. As soon as you push your toes down, boom, lift your levator ani, and then hold it and exhale and come out of the squat. That's how it would transfer to an exercise.

Ben Greenfield [00:22:21]: Makes perfect sense. And because I do so much of my training barefoot or now when I'm traveling, I wear. I don't know what you think about Mark Sisson's brand, Peluva, these toe shoes with a slightly wider toe box. It's very easy for me to do a lot of what you're talking about, but this kind of leads into a very important discussion, of course, about footwear. How difficult is it to do everything that you're talking about? Wearing the average pair of shoes.

Emily Splichal [00:22:51]: If the shoe has a stack cushion, the rocker narrow, is going to obviously make this more difficult. I am a big fan of Peluva. It's actually what I choose to wear when I lift. And then sometimes with some of the lifts, I still will end up taking my shoes off, because even that slight stack that's under Peluva, which it's, it's a few millimeters of cushion, it will still alter my alignment and my ability to get into the foot. So footwear, even the most minimal footwear, will take away some of that connection to the ground and the activation of the digits. Can you still push your toes down when you are in a Vivo or a Xero or a Peluva? Absolutely. Absolutely. So you can start to get that connection.

Emily Splichal [00:23:35]: It might be easier barefoot. So when someone owns it and they have it strong barefoot. Now let's try it when we're in shoes.

Ben Greenfield [00:23:43]: Okay. I want to come back to shoes briefly, but I want to share with you something. Get your take on this. I made up this exercise in the gym that I think relates to and incorporates a lot of what you're describing. I use this as a warm-up, especially when I'm when I'm doing a lot of leg exercises. But just in general, it's one of my favorite warm-ups to do because it engages with a lot of what you're describing. I have a Power Plate. It has this naturally if you take the protective cushion that it comes with off the top of it, it has this naturally kind of tacky, tacky, proprioceptive surface on it.

Ben Greenfield [00:24:19]: I stand on that in a wide squat. I curl my toes down into flexion. I flip it on for a minute. It vibrates. I drop into an isometric squat and hold this isometric squat with my toes inflection. But this vibratory component of the Power Plate seems to enhance that even more. If I do that before a workout, my feet feel completely well. Between that and walking down the gravel pathway to the gym barefoot, my feet feel completely turned on for the rest of the workout.

Ben Greenfield [00:24:52]: Have you ever tried that, doing barefoot exercises on top of a Power Plate to introduce the vibratory component?

Emily Splichal [00:24:58]: Oh, my gosh, Ben. It is like you are reading my mind. At Neboso, we have a relationship with Power Plate, and they make our mats on top of their Power Plates. So, so funny. I love Power Plate. I have one in my office, and they've actually created various foot programs and balance programs for the company. So, yes, I'm very much into this. Yes.

Emily Splichal [00:25:22]: I was literally like, oh, my God, Ben. Yes. So part of why that's working is that vibration is one of the other stimuli that the nerves in the bottom of our feet are sensitive to. The first one was texture. That's what Naboso is. The second is vibration. And 70% of the nerves in the bottom of our feet are sensitive to vibration. So that's why you were feeling so connected.

Emily Splichal [00:25:49]: You woke up the muscles, you woke up the nerves. You stimulated circulation. So, yeah, virtual high five for doing that. Keep doing it.

Ben Greenfield [00:25:57]: Okay. Fantastic. They also have a vibrating bike that I ride barefoot, which is. Which is great. They're their Rev bike. Okay. So the shoe thing is interesting to me. This one I've been thinking about a lot, and wanted to run it by you.

Ben Greenfield [00:26:10]: I had a bunion for a few months, and maybe as a part of your reply to my question, you can explain to people what a bunion actually is and how that happens. And I found it actually pretty irritating and painful to use Peluva, Vivo, Barefoot Xero, any of my low-drop, wide-toe box barefoot style shoes. And so then I switched for that period of months where I was dealing with the bunion to the Brooks Ghost, kind of a more cushioned shoe, but also a shoe that has the cushioning but a very wide toe box. And any of the cushion shoes without the wide toe box, cause the same amount of pain as the more barefoot style shoes. So my question for you is twofold. One, and this might be kind of involved, what is a bunny and where does that come from? And two, what kind of shoe is best if you're dealing with something like that?

Emily Splichal [00:27:11]: Yeah, so I want to actually, I'm going to answer those questions on the bunion, but I want to add one actual aspect to that is sometimes people think they have a bunion, but they actually have Hallux limitus . And sometimes they'll call that a dorsal bunion or a bunion on the top of the foot versus the side of the foot. So I just, I want that subtle clarification is what's a bunion? What would be a hallux limitus or pain in the joint, but no bump. And then how does that affect movement? And then how does footwear affect that? So when it comes to your big toe, which we described how important the big toe is, any sort of deviation in really the transverse plane, but in the alignment of your big toe, where maybe the metatarsal, the long bone swings out and then the toe comes in and it makes that angulation and the bump, that's a bunion. Bunions are associated with foot stability, foot laxity, foot posture, or lack thereof. So most often you will see bunions or a deviation of that metatarsal in the angulation. When someone has a very flexible foot, a flexible flat foot over pronation, there's some loss of stability in the foot, which predisposes the ability for that metatarsal to swing out. I just want to emphasize that because sometimes people will blame shoes, and shoes that are, let's say, pointy or narrow will push a toe in.

Emily Splichal [00:28:43]: Imagine, like a triangular shape, and you're creating a triangular at the end of the toe. That's not necessarily a bunion, just the toe angled in isn't a bunion. What a bunion is. Is the opening of the metatarsals and that bump of the metatarsal head swinging out, that. I just want that clarification so that people understand, really, what's a bunion?

Ben Greenfield [00:29:06]: Okay, but a quick question about that. If I'm wearing a narrow toe box shoe and it's pushing the. Is compressing the toes and kind of pushing that big toe medially, wouldn't that, by definition, be kind of putting outward force on the metatarsal, thus contributing to a bunion like state?

Emily Splichal [00:29:25]: So let's call it a bunion-like or pseudo. Pseudo bunion. So, again, really what a bunion is, is that opening, the opening of the metatarsals. So when I assess a bunion, I cannot do a complete bunion assessment without looking at x-rays, because I have to measure that angle between the first and the second metatarsal. That is a subtle but very important distinction because then that helps to understand. Well, are bunions reversible? Can I reverse a bunion with exercises, and Toe Spacers conservatively, or can I only reverse a bunion through surgery? Well, if a bunion is the opening of the metatarsals, that can only be addressed in surgery. If we're thinking of a toe that's angled and the metatarsal hasn't swung out, which you can get, that would be more shoes causing that. And you use Toe Spacers and you stretch it and you strengthen the intrinsics, and you start to see that toe sit straighter then, yes, you can do that.

Emily Splichal [00:30:37]: But that opening of the metatarsal. So I just want that clarification, that's all. Because there's so much conversation about this, especially online, and that subtle differentiation just helps the listeners, the consumers, patients really understand the diagnosis. Now around the bunion. So the concern around a bunion, let's say the metatarsal swing out and the toe comes in and we have this angulation. You got a bump. My concern is not really the bump or the angulation. It's at the joint.

Emily Splichal [00:31:10]: So when you start to go like this and you angle the metatarsal in the toe, and for those that are just listening, I'm creating a bunion with my hand, hands, and I'm shifting the joint out of alignment, which means now your cartilage is not lined up anymore. When a joint isn't lined up, I don't care what joint in the body it is, you start to shift. The way you put pressure on cartilage, you get pain, arthritis, you lose range of motion. So a lot of symptoms of bunions are actually soft tissue capsulitis, that is from pinching and shifting off of that cartilage. That's a part of it that I would want you to know. Then, in the case of hallux limitus, or where people will call it a dorsal bunion, is the joint has compressed for whatever reason. There's many reasons, but the joint has compressed and you're pinching the capsule and creating a capsulitis as well. And that can be very painful.

Emily Splichal [00:32:12]: So big toe pain, whether it's a bunion, Hallux limitus , it's soft tissue.

Ben Greenfield [00:32:18]: Got it. And if my big toe is hurt, is there a case to be made? Kind of like I experienced with my own what I'm pretty sure was a bunion, to be switching to a shoe that has some extra cushioning instead of these, say, barefoot shoes or toe shoes, because wearing that Brooks ghost gave me a ton of relief.

Emily Splichal [00:32:38]: It can now. What I want people to also think about is that under your big toe metatarsal head, you have your little sesmoids, and when you shift, the way you move through the big toe, you can put pressure on those sesmoids. So sometimes it's about getting cushion under the big toe, because the sesmoids and how you're putting pressure through it. What I would be curious to try and is what's called a Dancer's Pad, and I love to try Dancer's Pads on bunions. Halleck. Flamidus sesmoiditis. Anything around the big toe. Go to Amazon.

Emily Splichal [00:33:13]: Actually, there's a company called Hapad, H A P A D. They have high-quality Dancer's Pads. Put it on your foot, walk around, try it, and it can balance the timing of how you move around the big toe. And I have videos on how to put it on your foot on my YouTube. It's a great way to do it. You might want to temporarily use a shoe that has a rocker. Some people feel better in minimal shoes. So really it's a demonstration of listening to your foot, listening to your body, and understanding that if you need to use a little more cushion, it's temporary.

Emily Splichal [00:33:49]: Let's balance the stress around the joint. If you use a rocker, let's balance the stress around the joint, and then you can kind of deviate back to your ideal footwear.

Ben Greenfield [00:33:58]: Yeah. And I also watched some of your videos and read some of your articles. I did deep tissue work for the bottom of the foot. A lot of rolling. I used the Naboso ball that you sent me and even went so far as to have it under my foot and reach down and kind of mobilize my big toe and move it around in circles and move that metatarsal as well while the ball was underneath my foot. But do you know the one thing, and I want to ask you how this works and why this was so effective that made the biggest impact on the bunion? I'll let you guess first.

Emily Splichal [00:34:36]: Toe spacers.

Ben Greenfield [00:34:38]: Toe spacers, exactly. You nailed it. Well, 1st. 1st guess, you know, I didn't talk about this before the show at all. So I, you send me these Toe Spacers and I put them on and it was super annoying. Like my feet would start to ache and had them on on airplanes and I'd wake up in the middle of the night and then after like a week, my feet started to get wider. My toes started to get wider. And it's crazy because even my wife commented, your feet look different.

Ben Greenfield [00:34:58]: Like my actual toes have a huge amount of space between them. Now after about four weeks of consistent use, I mean, almost 24 hours a day wearing these Toe Spacers. As a matter of fact, I think my team might have reached out because I've already burnt through two pairs of them. I got to get some more Toe Spacers. So, I mean, I'm wearing the hot tub and in the shower and airplanes. So what is it about Toe Spacers that makes them work so effectively? You might even want to explain to people who might not know what they are, what a toe spacer is, and how that actually works.

Emily Splichal [00:35:29]: Yes. Oh my gosh. So Toe Spacers, imagine, imagine something that slides on top of, your toes. Sometimes people will think of when someone's getting a pedicure and you're taping or you're painting the toes, they put something in between and they're like, kind of like that. Like if you're getting a pedicure done. Okay. Yes. But this is more specific.

Emily Splichal [00:35:51]: This would slide on and it would open up all five of your toes with an interspace between all of them. They are designed to be worn as a form of recovery at the end of the day in your shoes. When working out, people wear them all day. They're really, really good for bunions. So there you go with that one. Hammertoes, neuromas, plantar fasciitis. A day in your shoes and now your shoes were tighter and now you want to open up your feet and spread. So they are awesome.

Emily Splichal [00:36:27]: And it was really interesting. The Wall Street Journal actually did a piece on Toe Spacers and it was all about the monetary side of the spaces and they're like, what is this crazy foot recovery trend that is just exploding on social media? And celebrities and professional athletes are using it and they're like, this is so bizarre. And I helped them with the piece. I essentially helped the writer justify to the editor in the Wall Street Journal that this was a money conversation here because it was so crazy. But yeah, it is one of the fastest-growing fruit recovery trends. Who would have thought?

Ben Greenfield [00:37:05]: Oh my gosh, I'll have to find that article. Link to it. You go to BenGreenfieldlife.com/drEmily Dr. Emily, if you're listening, and I'll have awake to a lot of this stuff that Emily and I are talking about. So just as a preventive or even perhaps a foot health enhancement tool, is there a case to be made for using these Toe Spacers, even if you don't have a recognizable foot issue or toe pain or a bunion or something like that?

Emily Splichal [00:37:34]: Absolutely. Absolutely. It is actually one of the easiest ways to just start to bring foot health into your daily routine and your habit. And that, I mean, that's a huge part of what I stand behind. Why I do podcasts like this is that I want people to think about their feet now, not only when they have plantar fasciitis or a bunion or when they're 80. I want people to do it now. Toe Spacers are one of the best ways to do it because you can walk around in them. Just put them on at the end of the day and walk around.

Ben Greenfield [00:38:02]: Yeah, way easier than duct-taping nail boards to your feet. Some people might be getting tired of hearing us talk just about the toes. You have such a broad range of knowledge in so many other areas. And one thing I've seen you address recently has been walking, and specifically something that I've alluded to on the show before. But I'd love to hear your take on this. The idea between walking, walking speed, and longevity. Tell me about that.

Emily Splichal [00:38:34]: Yes. So a big part of what I focus on in my work, I'm actually writing another book really around this, is that our nervous system and the evolution of how we are today from our level of cognition, our emotional regulation, is based around how we've evolved to walk or the fact that we did evolve to walk and stand on 2ft, et cetera. So to optimize longevity, protect your brain health, to support emotional connection, is based around never stop moving means walking, continuously walking, such as what you're doing right now, but it's walking at a certain pace. And if people think about the way that they walk right now. Just kind of average day, they're walking maybe to their cardinal around their home, the car, to the grocery store. So there we walk in these very short, staccato steps. We do not walk in the way that we were evolved to walk. Imagine in the wild where you're walking in very long steps.

Emily Splichal [00:39:39]: You're walking at a certain pace. When someone does walking exercise, they are going to pick up the pace. That is really how we were designed to walk. Now, why that's important is when you pick up a certain pace, you have to take these long steps. And every time you take a long step, your pelvis starts to rotate and then your torso counter rotates. So you are what's called decoupling your spine and these rotations all the way from your foot. Your foot is doing a different type of rotation, but it's still rotating, which rotates the leg, which then rotates the pelvis and the t spine. And you're essential, that's part of how you hydrate your system, your fascia, by getting this pump going within your body.

Emily Splichal [00:40:26]: But the only way you can activate that and get the torso and the t spine to rotate and the arm swing is you have to take long enough steps, which means you have to walk fast enough. Another big part of this is that when you walk at a certain speed, you get this full circulatory pump going, which gets blood to your brain, and it actually stimulates brain-derived neural growth factor. And that's very cognitive protective. That's dementia protective. And that's a huge part of longevity, is keeping that brain nice and solid. So that's a really important part. Now, the big thing, and this is what I focus on with my work, is you can't just walk fast and, like, want to walk fast and then walk fast, because there's a lot of requirements in the system to be able to walk fast. We already spoke about one if you do not have range of motion in your big toe, you cannot take a long step, which means you can't walk fast if you don't have range of motion in your big toe.

Emily Splichal [00:41:29]: So that already is one of the linchpins or the requirements to the protective mechanism of walking fast is your big toe. That's huge. If you can't plantar flex your ankle enough into that push off position, you can't walk fast. If you can't extend your hip, if your pelvis and your t spine don't rotate, you cannot walk fast. If you cannot stand on one leg. That's a requirement for walking fast. So that's what I try to get people to understand, is to break it down and say what's required to walk fast. As soon as I understand the longevity anti-aging mechanism of walking fast, well, this is what's required.

Emily Splichal [00:42:13]: So that's what I need to focus on.

Ben Greenfield [00:42:15]: Yeah, I love that. There was even a study that I saw recently on the so-called Japanese 3X3 walking interval. Very, very simple. It's walking aerobically for three minutes and then picking up the pace and walking as quickly as you can for three minutes. For three rounds. Actually, it might have been more than three rounds, but anyways, it's three minutes on, three minutes easy. This was actually studied as far as reducing the all-cause risk of mortality, the benefits on blood pressure, reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, and blood sugar management, just by modifying a walk so that some parts of the walk involved walking faster than you'd probably walk naturally.

Emily Splichal [00:42:52]: Yep. I love that. I would actually love to see that study. And it makes sense, right? Because they are. They're getting that activation of the pump. A lot of people, they put a lot of attention on fascial health, but part of your fascial health is that you have to activate it. So it's almost like wringing out a rag and you twist it and you untwist it. And what that does to a tissue hydration perspective.

Ben Greenfield [00:43:17]: Yeah. And you mentioned one thing when you were describing the ability to be able to walk quickly, and that was the single leg stability. I think that a lot of people might be intimidated by the idea of putting a slack line in the backyard. But last year, somebody sent me this thing. I believe it's just called a slack board. You stand on it, and it's like a slack line, but I just have one in my room next door to my office, and it allows you to do single foot balance, slack line type exercises. As a bonus, I'm in a huge amount of toe flexion. My toes get tired on this thing.

Ben Greenfield [00:43:52]: Have you ever done any writing or experimented at all with the idea of slack lining or slack boards?

Emily Splichal [00:43:59]: So there is some research around slacklining. Now, slacklining is hard. I played around with slack lines. I'm like, whoo, those are hard. But people can incorporate single-leg training, and balance training, in a way that is fun. And that's why I like slacklining because it makes it. You do it outside. Oftentimes, there are so many benefits of being outside.

Emily Splichal [00:44:20]: Some people will do it on a beam. So beams are really popular like the foot collective has a beam. You could do like a gymnastics beam, which is sometimes at parks. You could do that at Nebosa we have a kinesis board. So it's a single-leg balance platform. There's that slack block that you're talking about. So there are different ways to do that. And then, yes, part of how you maintain balance is toe flexor strength that we spoke about in the beginning.

Emily Splichal [00:44:48]: So all this stuff comes full circle. But being able to stand on one leg is very important. And what the research shows is that to predict falls or this ability to walk fast, really what you're looking at is can you stand on one leg for 10 seconds? Can you do that? Right. And oftentimes in my assessments, people even in their thirties cannot stand on one leg because unless you incorporate balance in a class or you consciously train your balance, no one is doing single-leg exercises.

Ben Greenfield [00:45:20]: Is that eyes open or eyes closed? The 10 seconds thing, it's eyes open.

Emily Splichal [00:45:25]: And people also fail that. But yes. Would you do it then with your eyes closed? That would be ideal. So what I recommend that people do is that they do five minutes of single-leg training every day. Do it when you brush your teeth, do what you're waiting for the coffee to be made, whatever it is, try to stand on one leg. And I do it always in ten-second bouts. So stand on your right leg for 10 seconds, stand on your left leg for 10 seconds, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and then you can play with your balance. So to challenge balance, you don't necessarily have to go to a kinesis board, to a slack block, to a bosu, or something like that.

Emily Splichal [00:46:06]: You could just perturb your system based off of understanding how we actually maintain balance. Part of how we maintain balance is by using our eyes, our ears, our touch and then our joints. So it's visual, vestibular, proprioceptive, and mechanoceptive. That's the system. So an example of how you would perturb that is stand on one leg and then just move your eyes to the right center, left center, and you're just moving your eyes. That's going to perturb your system. Okay. A way that you could perturb your vestibular.

Emily Splichal [00:46:41]: Stand on the leg again, look straight ahead, spot something, and then shake your head no. So it's not like a slow turn, but for the listeners you would be saying like, no, no, no, no. Or on the other foot, repeat it and say yes, like a bobblehead. You're just bobbling your head you're trying to perturb the inner ear fluid of your vestibular system. Then I'll have people do dual-tasking. So you could stand on one leg, spot something, count backward from 100 to multiples of three or seven or something, or spell a word backward, and you're balancing while doing something cognitive, and that will actually challenge your balance better than having to go onto a Bosu or something like that.

Ben Greenfield [00:47:29]: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I know a lot of people might hear an episode like this, and they'll be like, oh, gosh, yet another thing to do. When am I going to squeeze this in? I can tell you, for me, just to share my own perspective on this, I have two times the day that are carved out for, like, experimentation. One is after lunch because I'm constantly getting asked about these meditation devices neurofeedback devices and different chambers and relaxation techniques. So I usually have anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes carved out right after lunch to go to a relaxing area of the house and play with, assess, and experiment with relaxation, napping, and meditation-oriented devices, simply because my marriage and love life would suffer if I was doing this in bed at night with a bunch of wires attached to my head while my wife sits there staring lovingly at me. So I have that time carved out for trying out all the things, right? Like, all the bio acts that are supposed to, like, increase your heart rate variability or relax you or whatever. And I just carve that time out. It means I have to take a shorter lunch.

Ben Greenfield [00:48:36]: It means I've adjusted my day so that I'm sometimes working later into the day because I've lost that, if you want to call it losing it, that 30 to 60 minutes after lunch. But then also when I wake up, I bake in 15 minutes every morning to try out noodle exercises, foam rolling movements, you know, standing on that slack board that I mentioned, messing around with one of these Naboso tools. So that means that I give myself anywhere from 75 to 90 minutes a week, baked in, in the morning, protected time, 15 minutes, so that I can try this stuff out. So I would encourage people just, like, find a time, rather than like, kind of saying organically, oh, I try a few of those things Emily and Ben were talking about. Just find a time during the day where you can experiment with this stuff. And for me, it varies from day to day. Right. One day, I might be doing 15 minutes of a bunch of foot exercise stuff that I learned from Emily on this podcast that I want to try later on another day.

Ben Greenfield [00:49:35]: It might be 15 minutes of trying some kind of, like, a lymph circulation trampoline routine I learned from another guest, but I recommend that folks just, like, find a time of day to do this stuff. It leads to another question that I wanted to ask you, Emily, that might confuse some people or they might need some direction on this. I briefly mentioned the ball, and I think a lot of people have these things, like the lacrosse ball, the tennis ball, the golf ball, maybe one of your Naboso balls, and they keep it next to their desk, and they might kind of roll their foot up and down it occasionally. But is there. Is there something better we can do with these balls? Like, what's the best way to use one of these foot proprioceptive balls?

Emily Splichal [00:50:16]: Yes. So I am going to be biased here about the Naboso, because the neural ball, which is called a ball, actually splits into two pieces. So that just in itself is going to give a different relief.

Ben Greenfield [00:50:31]: Oh, shoot. I. Okay, so, first of all, I feel like an idiot right now. So I have multiple times broken the ball, and I've kind of, like, cursed you under my breath. Like, why the heck did she make a ball? It's so easy to break when I'm doing my foot-rolling exercises. It's designed to break into two pieces.

Emily Splichal [00:50:48]: Oh, my gosh. Yes. Ben, you.

Ben Greenfield [00:50:51]: Oh, geez. Okay. I learned something new every day.

Emily Splichal [00:50:54]: So it is a ball that splits into two pieces. So you have two domes, and this is the support of what you were talking about, where people are like, oh, great. Here's another thing. Right? This is going to allow you to stand on the domes and release both of your feet at the exact same time, so you can get this done way more efficiently. Obviously, there's the texture as well, because all the Naboso products have the texture. But why this is important is because you can do pinpoint pressure release, and you actually get a better release of the feet when you do pinpoint pressure. So when someone buys the neural ball, there is a QR code. Ben did not scan it, but that's okay.

Emily Splichal [00:51:32]: There's a QR code that takes you to a YouTube video on how to do the pinpoint pressure release. Totally fine. We point out the different five points. You would stand on each of these points for 30, 30 seconds. Not 30 minutes, 30 seconds. Go to the next point, and then you're getting the release. So I like pinpoint pressure. Pinpoint pressure to release the feet.

Emily Splichal [00:51:56]: Sometimes when you roll, you might hit a. Like a trigger point, let's say, which creates a guarding response. You contract the muscles versus relax the muscles. Another really good benefit. I talk a lot about circulation with the feet because it's so important and it's often overlooked. But when you stand on the domes and you're sitting there for 30 seconds, and then you lift your foot, that's where you're getting that. That rush of circulation to the tissue. I don't know if you've ever played around with flossing, like flossing a joint.

Emily Splichal [00:52:27]: And then you wrap it, and then it's really.

Ben Greenfield [00:52:29]: I love to do, like, knee flossing. Yeah, you wrap the joints with, like, a Yemenite, wear a real thin elastic band above and below, and then I'll flex and extend the knee. And when you take the band off, you get this rush of, like, pain free range of motion in the joint.

Emily Splichal [00:52:42]: Yep. So think of a similar compression release, and then you get that rush of circulation. So that's another benefit of doing pinpoint pressure release. So that's what I would say with it now, what I would say because I'm sure a lot of the listeners have Theragun, Hyperice, or some sort of percussive gun. I like to paint the foot with that. So I like to very lightly, almost like, tickle the foot with the percussive gun. So you're not pounding into the foot, but you're very lightly. And then that's going to stimulate all these superficial nerves, the circulation.

Emily Splichal [00:53:17]: You wake up your perception of the foot, almost like you did on the vibration platform. That's another way that people could do it. Or if people don't want to buy a $2,000 Power Plate, they could get a vibration roller and sit their feet on the roller, and that would bring that vibration as well.

Ben Greenfield [00:53:33]: Yeah, I love that. And there's definitely a link between some of these sensory perceptions and toe proprioception, because another guy who I haven't interviewed on the show yet, Derek, knows worthy, he wrote a book called Toilet Yoga. And it's literally, like, moves and stretches you can do during toilet time to allow you to pass a bowel movement more effectively. Part of it involves actually sitting on the toilet, one leg crossed over the other, doing specific toe and toe pressure point therapy with yours. With your hands and your fingers, and then switching and doing it on the other foot. And those moves frickin like opening up a faucet in the bowels for some reason. And so there's this. There's, believe it or not, there's an actual book called Toilet Yoga.

Ben Greenfield [00:54:17]: And part of it involves toe therapy.

Emily Splichal [00:54:19]: I mean, it makes sense, though, because when women are pregnant, you cannot get a foot massage after a certain point in your pregnancy, or you could use a foot massage to essentially induce labor. So that's very paralleling what that same thing is. But I love that. I need to check out that book.

Ben Greenfield [00:54:38]: Yeah. So in the same way that you've partnered or thought about partnering up with the treadmill and partnered up with the Power Plate, now you need to approach squatty potty about putting the Naboso on top of the squatty potty surface. That's your next move. It's your billion-dollar business idea. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Emily, this has been fascinating, as usual. Our other discussion was great.

Ben Greenfield [00:55:00]: This one, you know, again, I learned a ton. I've got a bunch of things to follow up on, including scanning my QR code for the ball, the cheap ball that breaks. That actually wasn't breaking. So anyway, for everybody listening in, I'm going to link to Dr. Emily and all of her materials at BenGreenfieldlife.com./drEmily and when does the book on walking come out? Emily yes.

Emily Splichal [00:55:24]: So that is going to be early September. We are in the final stages of that. I will definitely send you a copy because of that one, and I'll tell listeners now what is on. I call it the de-evolution crisis. So I really believe that we are, through technology, sitting sedentary. Just how the world is advancing in all these AI ways is actually disconnected, connecting a lot of the inherent reasons of why we evolved, which is human interaction. Touch, touch is huge. You have to be able to touch and be touched.

Emily Splichal [00:55:56]: You have to move. You have to move in a certain way. Obviously, I'll talk about footwear and barefoot stimulation, but there's so much about, really, our nervous system that we are that's shifting and changing as technology changes, and that's affecting our longevity and our anti-aging process. So that's the focus.

Ben Greenfield [00:56:17]: Right? I can't wait. You know, Mark, we mentioned earlier, Mark Sisson, the guy who does the Peluva, he has one coming out, I think, called Born to Walk. So it sounds like I'm binging on some walking books this fall, which is great. So again, if you're listening in, I'll link to all this stuff. Go to Ben greenfieldlife.com dremily Drmily listen to my other podcast with Emily as well. Between those two, you're gonna be equipped to have super feet and a super body. So, Emily, thank you so much once again for coming on the show, of course.

Emily Splichal [00:56:47]: Thank you so much.

Ben Greenfield [00:56:49]: All right, folks, I'm Ben Greenfield, along with Dr. Emily Splichal. Split off from Ben Greenfieldlife.com. Have an incredible week.

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