If you suffer an ictus, I hope this neurologist treats you

I don't know what today's thing is called.

Neuroplasticity, neurogenesis or miracle, depending on the doctor.

The thing is that Luis had a really bad stroke, completely paralysing his right side, and his doctor told him that he would never walk again, let alone run.

"I've had an ictus, and a big one, not like that Paquirrín... I'm sorry to say it like that, but that's how I feel".

Luis tells Ángel how it happened.

His frustration at seeing half his body paralysed.

His grief at not finding a way out.

His loneliness at finding himself in a bottomless pit from which he could not escape. He felt that life was over for him?

As the days went by, he regained his courage and his will to fight.

He started rehabilitation, but there was hardly any progress and some days he felt desperate.

Looking for a solution, he went to a podiatrist with a long waiting list.

"300 euros for the insole, a real rip-off," says Luis.

The visit to the podiatrist didn't help, but he didn't give up and kept looking.

He went to the neurologist M. Angel Jiménez Martín, at the Beata María Ana Hospital in Madrid, and his words were a bath of hope.

He told him that all was not lost, that he could continue running after rehabilitation.

"Try again Luis, keep running, but lighten your shoes, take things off. The less the better."

Luis was shocked by the neurologist's words: take things away, isn't it the other way around, the more the better?

When Luis started to investigate he realised that the neurologist was recommending minimalist shoes, but why didn't he tell him directly?

When he told him to take the shoe apart, I didn't understand what he meant.

It would have been easier if he had simply told him to wear minimalist shoes to increase the foot-brain connections, as these shoes allow the feet to pick up many more signals than normal shoes.

Luis thinks he didn't do it so that people in his trade couldn't tell him that he was making a profit by recommending them. So he just said he would take things away from the shoes.

Which things?

• The cushioning, not to confuse your foot. The ground is hard and not soft like the cushioning makes you feel. Removing the cushioning will make you land softer, using all your muscles and joints.

• The heel lift, so that the pressure distribution is equal all over your foot. The heel makes you land harder on your toes, deforming them and causing metatarsalgia and Morton's neuroma.

• The narrowness, so that the toes can open up, so they don't deform and you have more balance and stability when running.

• And the thickness of the sole, so that the thousands of sensitive organs in your feet can pick up the signals emitted by the ground and processed by the brain when you take a step.

In short, he will stay barefoot with trainers.

Since it was summer, Luis opted for the more barefoot option of trainers, the minimalist Pies Sucios Terra sandals.

He made the transition with the help of this book, and he says they started his recovery.

A miracle, for many doctors.

Science, evolution, common sense, for others.

Now he is looking for a closed shoe with less sole thickness.

He wants to feel more, to stimulate more.

Of all of them, today I recommend the Merrell Vapor Glove Eco.

Because they do everything the neurologist recommended to Luis,
and because they look great on.


The health of your brain starts with your feet.

Antonio Caballo

Pd. In my beginnings, when minimalist shoes didn't exist in Spain, I made my own shoes with the same advice that the neurologist gave Luis. I took things off, I even cut part of the sole to make it thinner, I told about it a long time ago in the blog correrdescalzos.es.