Shoes on at home or shoes off? If you care about your health, it's a no-brainer | Hacker News Reader

Shoes on at home or shoes off? If you care about your health, it's a no-brainer

theguardian.com

16 pointsn1b0m27 comments

> 96% of shoes tested positive for coliform bacteria, which is commonly found in faecal matter

This is given to us a a shocking statistic, but it reminds me of the Mythbusters toothbrush test. They were testing whether you should keep your toothbrush nearer to or further from the toilet in your bathroom, to prevent it becoming exposed to airborne coliform bacteria when the toilet is flushed.

So they attached brushes along the wall at a variety of distances, put a control brush in another part of the house, in the kitchen, waited a week and tested them.

Fecal coliform bacteria were found in all the brushes in the bathroom, which appeared to show there was no safe distance from the toilet. But it was also found in the control. The lesson I took from this is that it's everywhere.

So it may well be detectable on 96% of outdoor shoes but I bet it's already all over your house anyway.

Incidentally the guardian seems to run an article/opinion piece like this every few years, that exposes that indoor shoe-wearing is a "proven health risk" by showing what's on shoes, or what can be tracked into the house on them. But they are always missing the crucial piece of evidence on health outcomes - OK, you've shown that shoes have got some nasties on them, but you crucially haven't linked the wearing of shoes in the house to levels of these things that are known to cause issues, or to worse health in general.

They always make me think "So.... that's probably OK then?" much like the stats about the bacterial load that is to be found on workers' desks and how it's worse than the average toilet seat! OK, interesting factoid, but so many people do eat lunch at their desks anyway, and I'm not aware of any desk-related deaths or epidemics of food poisoning so ... it's probably OK?

Mythbusters dont count as science or studies. They are entertainment.

> Fecal coliform bacteria were found in all the brushes in the bathroom, which appeared to show there was no safe distance from the toilet.

It's not really about shit being on your toothbrush, but how much shit is on your toothbrush. Same with your floors. You'll certainly find all kinds of horrific things there even if you take your shoes off but you'll find less which can be the difference between you getting sick or not

I thought it was about foot health, as in "it cannot be healthy to wear shoes all the time". For me any time I can get out of my shoes I feel deep relief and it feels as if my feet can "finally breathe freely again" and I feel "more grounded" if my feet can feel the floor (yes, even with slippers).

Sometimes I use the trick from Die Hard: make fists with your feet, flexing the toes. That stretch is very relieving after wearing shoes

I love being barefoot.

But doing it 95% of the time for several weeks during the covid lockdowns showed me that apparently I need footwear in my life or I start to experience ankle pain.

Getting older sucks I guess :)

I was mid way through my evening floor-lick, took my normal 5m HN break, and I see this. Will make sure people take their shoes off!

Bacteria on the soles of your shoes != you get sick. Some germs (limited numbers) may actually be good for you.

Right. If this is a no-brainer, the author gives no compelling evidence to support it. Show me something tied to adverse health outcomes. I mean, you're significantly more likely to step on something that punctures your foot without shoes and that's an adverse outcome with as much support (though without actual stats admittedly) as the article gives.

"Step on something that punctures your foot" indoors? Your floors must be more dangerous than mine... I think having house slippers (including a couple of extra pairs for guests) could split the difference?

I've definitely stepped on carpet tack multiple times before and stabbed my toes and heels.

But the point being, if you're not going to tie your claims to adverse health outcomes then you're not making a slam dunk claim as this author seems to think they are.

What it is rhat you have on floors? I walk around in socks and dont recall any injuries.

I get that shoes off is supposedly cleaner, but how does much difference does that make if one has a cat or dog as well?

We are a mostly shoes off for ourselves, but do what you want for guests.

You wipe (or wash) their paws when they come in.

Do you know anyone who actually does that?

Yes, pet owners who live in no-shoes households. I live in Japan, basically everyone here does it. I do it as well.

If you have pets and want your floors (and sofas, and beds) to stay clean, you need to wipe/wash their paws. It takes like 30 seconds.

Interesting, as someone who lives in the states, most people I know have shoes-off households, but even those with pets don't ever wipe off the paws of their animals.

I've never even heard of anyone doing that, until reading your comment.

May be more cultural than you suspect.

After watching American TV shows and films I would never have guessed it was mostly shoes off in the States :)

I use public restrooms. Get on public transport, walk on curbs with dried piss...i get that "shoes on/off" is mainly cultural (mideast/asian - off, anglo - mainly on)...) But are folks really that gross? I get immunity building, but i do like some baseline hygeine.

When I was in high school, a certain friend came over to visit and he was shocked, shocked I tell you, that we were strictly a shoes-on household, and none of us had ever given it much thought; that's just how we lived, with our shoes on. Shortly after that, we would remodel our home and expose a lot of bare wood flooring, which is unpleasant if you're barefoot, I must say! We were also cat-owners (mostly indoor cats), and my mother would constantly shame me in advance, every time I wanted to trim my nails, that I must never leave a scrap of nail to fly onto the floor, because she would inevitably find it, as she was the "barefoot outlier" of our typically shoes-on policy.

Living alone for the last 30 years, I gradually developed a strictly shoes-off household. I've found it's easier to organize my shoes if they're doffed in one place by the door, and as a renter, I prefer to keep a clean carpet, because landlords don't really clean them, they only replace them after disasters. So a tenant's carpet tends to just accumulate nasty stains until it's unusable.

However, my fiancée came in from Barcelona and she was appalled at my barefoot habits! She said it would never do at her home! She immediately found slippers for me to wear, and that was a lot of trouble, because I am not accustomed to wearing slippers and I tended to slip out of them at all times. But she owned a cat, and cats tend to leave little surprises on the floor for us to find with our feet. And I'm unsure whether that's why fiancée wanted to enforce slipper-wearing, but it sure was a big deal for her.

Having always lived in a shoes off house hold I find wearing shoes in the house very strange. At what point would you put them on after waking up if say you were spending the whole morning at home?

For me, my shoes are predominately thongs (also referred to as flip flops in others parts of the world), and they’re directly next to my bed. They provide arch support which would otherwise leave me aching walking around the house presumably onto the flooring with little to no underlay.

I wear them non-stop until I hit the shower - I only have one pair but my wife has exponentially more and cycles through her pairs constantly, with a ritual cleanse in the shower for each used pair at least once a week.

That makes sense. I’ve mostly lived in houses with carpeted rooms so barefoot hasn’t been an issue, but in the bathroom and kitchen we’d normally wear some slippers.

Ahh thanks that’s useful to me as all. As someone that grew up with carpet everywhere, it would be always shoes off by choice - But now we avoid carpet everywhere as my son has dust allergies of all things, and carpets are ridiculously hard to keep clean.

I don't care about the extend of health risk/rewards. No everything is about health.

I dont like mud and unnecessary dust in house. Even if there is no health benefit to having clean floor with less cleaning, I prefer that.

What about shoes-off and everyone getting athletes foot?

If you're worried about that, have house shoes (or slippers). This is the norm, especially providing slippers for guests, in no-shoes homes.

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