Too TALL High Heels

The negative effects of Stilettos. How can they affect your health?

What are Stilettos? Stilettos are very tall high heels that many women choose to wear. Celebrities enjoy wearing it during events, women wear it to work, and people wear it for everyday wear too. By wearing such tall high heels, it’s like you are on your tip toes all the time. Can’t this affect your health? Orthopedists have warned women for years to take a precaution and not to wear them too often. Wearing high heels can contribute to the development of a variety of feet conditions like calluses, arthritis, chronic knee pain, sprained ankles, and back problems. When wearing high heeled shoes, the foot is held in a downward position. This keeps the knee, hip, and low back in a somewhat flexed position, which prevents the muscles that cross the backside of these joints to stretch out normally. Heels force muscles to work harder.

PhD student Robert Csapo, who is conducting the study, said: “As with every kind of exercise- and wearing stilettos is a kind of exercise – human tissue will develop with every stimulus which is imposed on it. Unfortunately, because the calf muscle is only used in a shortened position, it will itself shorten and means the muscle is weaker.”

Compared with walking barefoot, high heels increase the pressure of the inside of the knee by 26%. Overtime, this can lead to stiffness, pain, and injury. Increased pressure on the knee can lead to osteoarthritis. In 1998, a team of Harvard researchers linked high heels and knee osteoarthritis, a painful, degenerative joint disease. 80% of the 42 million Americans suffering from arthritis have osteoarthritis. Surgeons perform 300,000 artificial knee replacements in this country every year due to this condition.

“It takes a long time to feel the effects of knee osteoarthritis, and once you do, it’s too late,” Harvard researcher D Casey Kerrigan, MD, an associate professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation, tells WebMD

Low heeled shoes or no heels are a woman’s safest bet against osteoarthritis knees.

“Just wear flats,” said Dr. Kerrigan “I am strongly against wearing heels at all,” says Kerrigan, who never wears them. “Throw them out,” she says, adding that women shouldn’t be victims of fashion.

Stilettos are in style, and many of our future generation girls will surely wear them. Not only are they fashionable, but they also add height for us short gals who may be insecure about height. Several celebrities wear stilettos and teens look up to them and their fashion sense, which influence them to dress like that. I interviewed Jaime N about this. As you already should know, she is 6’1’’ so her height probably isn’t an issue.

“I mean I’m already tall but the look of stilettos is just fire (as in bomb). They are a cute look for dressy occasions and are sexy to wear for nice occasions when they are appropriate to wear. It’s a cool thing to wear when your older, but not too old!” –Jaime N.

So overall, for future girls who want to wear stilettos when they are older, there are the unknown negative effects to it that many are unaware of. Don’t forget to consider your physical health before sliding your feet into one of those heels!


SOURCES:
 -www.ynhh.org/healthlink/womens/womens 6 01.html
-www.healthatoz.com
-www.content.health.msn.com/content/article/31/1728_76613


-Esther K