Podiatrist · Specialist in Biomechanics · Founder of VOLKAN
"The body does not lose abilities because it wants to harm us. It loses them when it stops finding reasons to keep them."
"Before I could do it without thinking"
There is a phrase I hear many times in consultation.
—Before I walked for hours.
—Before I could squat.
—Before I ran after my kids without getting tired.
—Before I had much better balance.
A word always catches my attention.
Before.
Because almost never do all those abilities disappear overnight.
They do it little by little.
So slowly that we hardly notice.
Until one day we discover that what once seemed automatic now requires effort.
And then we think that the body has failed us.
But, in reality, it is usually doing exactly what it has been doing for millions of years.
Adapting.
Efficiency is one of the rules of life.
Our organism tries to be extraordinarily efficient.
Maintaining muscle consumes energy.
Preserving bone mass requires resources.
Coordinating complex movements needs practice.
Maintaining great mobility requires using it.
The brain also spends energy keeping neural circuits active.
That is why the organism continuously asks a very simple question.
Is this capacity still necessary?
If the answer is yes, invest in preserving it.
If the answer is no, start reducing resources.
Not because I want to punish us.
Because nature rewards efficiency.
Disuse also teaches
We often talk about learning as something positive.
But we rarely think that the body also learns when we stop moving.
It learns that it no longer needs as much strength.
It learns that certain joint ranges are hardly used.
It learns that certain skills have ceased to be part of daily life.
And acts accordingly.
Muscles lose capacity.
Tissues tolerate less load.
Balance worsens.
Coordination becomes less precise.
It is not a capricious deterioration process.
It is an adaptation to disuse.
The brain also simplifies
There is a fascinating idea.
Not only do the tissues change.
The representation that the brain has of the body also changes.
The areas we use frequently receive more attention.
The movements we repeat become more precise.
The skills we practice are refined.
In contrast, what we stop using loses prominence.
It's like a language.
If you speak it every day, it flows naturally.
If twenty years go by without using it, many words are still there.
But it's hard to find them.
The body works in a surprisingly similar way.
It is not a condemnation.
Here comes the best news.
Most of these changes are not permanent.
If the body stopped investing in a capacity because it stopped using it, many times it will start doing so again when that capacity becomes important again.
It doesn't happen immediately.
It needs time.
Repetition.
Patience.
But the direction can change.
That explains why a sedentary person can regain strength.
Why someone regains balance after an injury.
Why an adult can improve their mobility years after losing it.
Biology rarely completely closes a door.
It simply stops keeping open those that are not used.
What does this have to do with barefoot?
A lot.
For decades many people barely use all the capacity of their feet.
The toes participate less.
The intrinsic muscles work little.
The sensory information coming from the ground decreases.
The body interprets that some of those functions are no longer priorities.
When we start a gradual transition to footwear that allows greater freedom, the body receives a different message.
"This ability is useful again."
And then it can start to invest in it again.
Not because the footwear does the job.
But because it offers the body an opportunity to use functions that had been sidelined.
What I see every day in consultation
There is something that particularly excites me.
Seeing how a person regains an ability they thought was lost.
It doesn't happen all at once.
It almost always happens the same way.
First a small change appears.
Then another.
And another.
One day they manage to maintain balance for a few more seconds.
Another day they walk with more confidence.
Weeks later they discover that they no longer think about every step.
A miracle has not occurred.
Something much more interesting has happened.
The body has come to consider an ability that had been unused for a long time as useful again.
And it has decided to invest in it again.
What you can do starting today
Think of an ability that you have stopped using.
It could be to walk more.
Climbing stairs.
Squatting.
Moving your toes.
Maintaining balance on one leg.
Don't try to regain it all at once.
Make it an invitation.
Dedicate some minutes each day to it.
Allow the body to remember that this function still makes sense.
Because the body responds much better to repeated invitations than to specific demands.
🔬 In a sentence
The organism retains what it uses frequently and reduces resources in what it no longer needs.
The most important idea
Losing a capacity does not always mean that the body is deteriorating.
Many times it means that it has adapted to a life where that capacity has ceased to be necessary.
And that idea completely changes the perspective.
Because if disuse helped build that adaptation, intelligent use can help build a different one.
The body never stops adapting.
It only changes the direction of that adaptation based on the information it receives every day.
A question to reflect on
Think of some physical ability that you miss.
Did you really lose it… or has your body simply stopped receiving enough reasons to keep it?
In the next article…
So far we have talked about how the organism learns, forgets, and relearns.
But there is a question that we rarely ask ourselves.
What is aging really?
Is it an inevitable process of loss?
Or is it, to a large extent, the result of millions of small adaptations accumulated over the years?
In the next chapter we will explore an idea that can profoundly change our way of understanding the passage of time.
We will discover that aging does not mean stopping to adapt; it means adapting to a life story.