We, as collegiettes™, LOVE our heels. They are the integral part of our Thursday night outfit. They add just enough height and length to our bodies to get us noticed as we enter our favorite bars. They are a fashion statement. No matter how high they reach or how much they kill our feet, we smile proudly as the compliments keep coming in about how great they look on us. But what is that pain actually telling us? Sure it’s usually gone by the time we wake up in the morning, but are there long-term effects that we should be more concerned about?
Gretchen Reynolds, a columnist for the New York Times Health blog, wrote an article back in January summarizing the findings of doctors and scientists who examined the effects of high heels on women whose ages ranged from their late teens to their early 30’s. These are some of the results from their experiments:
“…the scientists found that [habitual] heel wearers moved with shorter, more forceful strides than the control group, their feet perpetually in a flexed, toes-pointed position. This movement pattern continued even when the women kicked off their heels and walked barefoot. As a result, the fibers in their calf muscles had shortened and they put much greater mechanical strain on their calf muscles than the control group did.”
“In that control group, the women who rarely wore heels, walking primarily involved stretching and stressing their tendons, especially the Achilles tendon. But in the heel wearers, the walking mostly engaged their muscles.”
So what does strain on your calf muscles actually mean for your feet and legs overall?
“We think that the large muscle strains that occur when walking in heels may ultimately increase the likelihood of strain injuries…The risks extend to workouts, when heel wearers abruptly switch to sneakers or other flat shoes. ‘In a person who wears heels most of her working week,’ Dr. Cronin says, the foot and leg positioning in heels ‘becomes the new default position for the joints and the structures within. Any change to this default setting,’ he says, like pulling on Keds or Crocs, constitutes ‘a novel environment, which could increase injury risk.’”
Obviously, we are all going to continue wearing our sky-high stilettos because, let’s face it, we love them. This is just a little something to keep in mind the next time your feet are killing you and you think beauty is pain. Beauty, in this case, can actually lead to injury.
To read the entire article, go to: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/scientists-look-at-the-dangers-of-high-heels/