Vibrams are simply amazing - after getting patellar tendonititis due to running incorrectly, my doctor ended up suggesting a basic pair of KSO's to wear.

As said before, shin splints will come if you go hardcore into them. I loved the shoes, wore them every day because my feet felt so much better than in cross-trainers, but I ended up getting some super shin splints and sore muscles for the first couple weeks I wore them. Also, if you were like me, I had shallow arches, and Vibrams ended up helping me build some arches - it was painful, but man, its weird looking at what I use to wear now...

Its been about a year since I started wearing them, and I have not been able to put any other shoes on with them feeling like they are impacting my knees - the zero-degree impact makes ALL the difference. I tried my other cross trainers on recently, and after about an hour of just walking in them, I felt like a retard. You learn to walk correctly over time, taking more shallow steps and those stupid cross trainers did not feel like my bare feet.

Studies prove what I felt - they showed that your body naturally wants to be as close to the ground as possible, you know, that sense of being grounded. Your foot has a very sensitive sensory system, which relays what we are standing on to our brain, so the sense of being grounded and feeling what we are stepping on makes our bodies feel better and build a better sense of balance.

I forget where the study was, but I remember seeing it in a fitness article, and they had hooked a bunch of old people up to sensory boards, where they measure the amount of pressure exerted by the body to what they are standing on, and they found that the "orthopedic" shoes that some old people are told to wear actually cause heavier steps. When another set of old people were trained to walk correctly with Vibrams, it was shown that they exerted almost 40% less pressure. When you are old, that can make the difference between pain and no pain while walking.

In short, Vibrams have saved my knees, and no other shoe I have worn can get close to the natural feel I get every day. If I am not using my Vibrams, I am running barefoot.

Why fix what we were given? We tried "fixing" shoes with all these inventions, like curved tips (to replace the power that our toes usually give) to padded heels.