I just read an article on the ABC Health website about a study that indicates that the foot pain that many women experience may be due to wearing high heel shoes. As a chiropractor, my first response was “Duh, tell women something they don’t know!” If you wear high heels, you already know that they make your feet hurt!
Alyssa Dufour of the Institute of Aging research, Hebrew SeniorLife in Boston, and her colleges, performed a large population-based study of foot pain and shoe style. The results, reported in the October issue of Arthritis Care & Research, revealed that a “certain type” of foot pain was directly related to the wearing of high heels. The finding applied only to women (Hmmm.) and only to one type of foot pain, pain in the heel. Dufour and her colleges found that women who wore “good” shoes were 67 percent less likely to develop “hindfoot pain” than those who wore “average” shoes.
“Hindfoot pain” is also known as Plantar Fascitis. One cause of this condition is short, tight calf muscles. When calf muscles get short and tight they exert a strong pull on the back of the heel bone, producing undue stress on the smaller and weaker plantar muscles and fascia. What can make calf muscles get short and tight? You guessed it: The wearing of high heels is often the reason. So, as doctor of chiropractic who has treated hundreds of women suffering from Plantar Fascitis, or heel pain, I must disagree with the conclusion reached by Dufour and her colleges. From my experience I have to say that the only “good” high heel is a flat heel!