In a perfect world, style and comfort would exist side by side, and you’d never need to trade health for fashion. For those irresistibly drawn to high heels, there’s little common ground. So you can better understand the toll that heels take on your body, let’s review the physical effects that high heels create...
Unnatural angles
Perhaps the biggest challenge in wearing heels comes from the downhill slope that’s forced upon your feet. The bulk of your weight rests on the ball and toes of your feet. This ramping effect potentially leads to six physical effects with negative impacts on the structures of your feet and beyond. These include:
1.) Posture changes
Posture refers to the overall balance of your body, both at rest and in motion. Good posture reflects an even distribution of load shared from head to toe, while poor posture sees larger than normal loads concentrated in certain areas. Poor posture caused by high heels results from the weight that your forefoot is forced to absorb. Your body mechanics automatically shift to restore some type of balance. However, this shift forces other joints out of their normal relationships, most commonly the knees, hips, and lower back.
2.) Body imbalance
Your feet are your stabilizing connection with the ground, the basis for balance and support of the rest of your body. For that, you require all 26 bones, 33 joints, and supporting soft tissue to maintain stability. Yet heels lift about half of your feet out of the balance equation. Anatomical components in your feet and legs must compensate, under strain, to maintain your ability to balance in an upright position.
3.) Foot pain
High heels force a misalignment of body weight that’s forced onto the ball of the feet, overloading the area and potentially causing chronic pain conditions related to the extra weight forced on the forefoot.
4.) Arches and heels
The Achilles tendon has a range of motion through which it expands and contracts normally. In heels, the tendon is forced into its contracted position, leading to pain and irritation of the tendon. The arches of your feet are held in their curved shape by a band of tissue called the plantar fascia. The uneven distribution caused by wearing heels can cause micro tears in the fascia tissue, causing pain and inflammation that contributes to an often-chronic pain condition called plantar fasciitis.
5.) Hips and knees
The normal orientation of joints in the hips and knees must adjust to absorb the altered load from high heel weight distributions, leading to aches, pains, and, potentially, deterioration of these joints.
6.) Fractures, sprains, and tears
The lack of foot stability can lead to turned ankles, missed steps, and even simply increased forces that cause stress fractures.
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