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As a teen, I rarely missed an opportunity to break out my highest heels for Sunday church services. But there was one usher in particular who hated to see me coming.
“Goodness those shoes give me a headache,” she dramatically snarled at me one day as I entered the church cafeteria. “Keep it up and your entire uterus is going to shift.
In my mind, I wrote her off as a grouchy old bird who had apparently never mastered the “if you have nothing nice to say don’t say anything at all” rule. But a recent study suggests that the mean usher who constantly hated on my choice of shoes may have been onto something.
New research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, published in the Journal of Foot and Ankle Study, revealed that high-heel related injuries doubled between 2002 and 2012. The frequency and severity of said injuries caused investigators to recommend wearing the right shoes for the appropriate occasions. Interestingly, nearly half of these injuries occurred in the home. It was also revealed that while females made up the majority of these injuries, the rate of injury for Black women was twice that of White women.
“Although high-heeled shoes might be stylish, from a health standpoint, it would be worthwhile for those interested in wearing high-heeled shoes to understand the risks and the potential harm that precarious activities in high-heeled shoes can cause,” said lead investigator Gerald McGwin, Ph.D., vice chair and professor of the Department of Epidemiology in the UAB School of Public Health.
In addition to terrible mishaps, research suggests that these heels can cause lower leg, ankle and foot discomfort as well as “reduce ankle muscle movement, step length, total range of movement and balance control.”
“Some historians suggest that high-heeled shoes have been around for nearly 300 years and that medical professionals have been warning wearers about the dangers of such shoes for the same amount of time,” McGwin said. “While previous studies have confirmed that high heels are associated with lower extremity discomfort and musculoskeletal issues, there is very little information on the nature and frequency of these injuries, or which age groups were most affected.”
As a solution, researchers suggest that “those wearing heels be aware of how often and for how long they wear them.”
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