So much for "sensible" shoes. Stiletto heels are healthier.
Stiletto heels have their good points
By Robert Uhlig, Technology Correspondent
SPINDLY stilettos do less damage to women's knees than sensible wide-heeled court shoes, scientists reveal today.
A study found that one woman in five teetered around in uncomfortable shoes. In The Lancet today Dr Casey Kerrigan, of the Harvard Medical School in America, reports that wide-heeled shoes with plenty of toe space put women more at risk from osteoarthritis.
Prof Kerrigan said: "Although high-heeled shoes are traditionally thought of as stilettos with a narrow-base sole and heel, women's dress shoes with wide-base soles and moderately high high heels are routinely worn by women of all ages, in work and other settings."
His team studied 20 women, average age 34, as they walked barefoot, in wide-heeled shoes and then in stilettos along a 30 ft gangway. Using motion analysis, they measured the pressures placed on knee joints by the different types of shoes.
Both types of shoes increased the inwards twisting pressure on knee joints, but the wide-heeled shoes increased pressure by 26 per cent compared with standing still, whereas stilettos exerted a 22 per cent increase.
Prof Kerrigan also found that walking in the wide-heeled shoes caused almost a third more pressure on the knee than walking barefoot. Both types of shoe had heels almost three inches high, but the base of the stilettos was less than half an inch wide, whereas the court shoes were more than one and three-quarter inches wide at the base of their heels.
telegraph.co.uk |
