High Heels, High Pain

The pain you feel while walking in your 6-inch Louboutins and sky-high Prada pumps is a symptom of the real damage high heels may be doing to your body, new research finds.

“The structure of the foot is just not meant to be crammed in the shoe that way,” Dr. Braxton Little, a podiatrist at the UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, California, told ABC News. “It just puts the body in a very unnatural position.”



A first-of-its-kind study published last week in the The Journal of Applied Physiology found that wearing high heels could lead to permanent damage of the calf muscles by increasing the mechanical strain on the muscles and shortening the muscles’ fibers, all thanks to the flexed, toes-pointed position of the feet that remains even after you kick off those stilettoes.

The Australian study looked at nine women, who ranged in age from late teens to early 30s, and had worn high heels for at least 40 hours per week for the past two years.




Researchers, as reported in the New York Times, used ultrasound probes, electrodes and motion-capture markers to monitor the women as they walked, barefoot and then in heels, along a 26-foot-long walkway.

The findings suggest that the women in high heels walked with “shorter, more forceful strides” and engaged their muscles as opposed to their tendons, leaving them vulnerable to injury and prone to muscle fatigue, the Times reported.

“We think that the large muscle strains that occur when walking in heels may ultimately increase the likelihood of strain injuries,” Dr. Neil Cronin, one of the study’s lead researchers, told the Times



(Source: abc news)