How High Heels May Be Ruining Your Health and affect different parts of your body?

High heels are a fashion accessory for the women with their formal and party dresses. Excessive and regular use of high heels can lead to lot of problems for the women, especially if their body weight is also on higher side.

The high heels can lead to following problems:

• Joint pain: Our feet are designed by the God in such a way that the heel rotates a bit during each stance phase of walking. When we wear high heel, the foot is not able to rotate on the heel and maximum pressure comes on the toes and part of this burnt is taken by the knees. This leads to severe foot pain and exacerbation of knee arthritic pain after prolonged period of wearing heel.

• Callouses: Our feet are broad from the front and narrow at the heel. When you wear heel with pointed shoes (usually the high heel shoes are pointed) the broad front part of the foot is pushed inside the narrow shoe and that leads to excessive pressure on the skin of forefoot. This leads to painful corns and callosities formation on the foot. This pain further aggravates the problem as it leads to altered gait pattern.

• Shortened Achilles Tendon: Our calf has one of the strongest muscles of the body, called Achilles tendon. With the heels in lifted position for long periods, the muscle gets shortened and this leads to severe stretching pain in the calf and back of the heels after removal of the shoes, when you walk bare foot and the heel touches the floor.

• Low back pain: When you wear heel, your lower back and pelvis is pushed forward to balance the body weight. This makes your side profile curvier, but it actually puts excessive stress on the muscles of the lower back and gluteal region. Ladies who stand for long periods with high heels get pain in lower back and may also develop disc prolapse.

• Foot pain: If you wear high heels, the body weight is borne by the toes rather than heel and this leads to pain in the ball of toes. Over time the natural cushion at the toes wears away and that leads to pain and unsightly feet. Many people are getting Botox injections to fill this cushion (Stiletto lift), but the best solution is to avoid wearing heels for long periods.

• Fall and injury: Our feet are designed in such a way that the weight bearing occurs through the heel, outer border and toes. If we wear heels, the body weight is maximally borne by the toes and that makes a situation of imbalance while walking. This can lead to frequent falls which lead to either ankle sprain or ankle fracture. Everyone remembers the famous fall of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan on the Miss India ramp. It’s nearly impossible to perfectly balance, especially in very high heels, so any bump in the pavement can feel like a 10-foot wall when you’re trying to scale it in your favorite pumps.

• Ingrown toenails: Most heels have a pointy or almond shaped toe. This leads to excessive pressure on the sides of great and little toe. This pressure actually pushes your toe skin on the nails and the nails grow inside the skin and leads to painful swelling and infection, which may require surgery.

So, high heels are bad for our health and to minimize the side effects, we have to modify certain things in our life. Instead of pointed heels, one should wear platform heels, especially when one has to stand and walk for longer periods. Also, one should restrict the use of Stilletoes to maximum THREE HOURS in a day.

If your job requires you to wear pointed heels for the whole day, then you should stretch your calf and foot muscle twice a day after hot water fomentation. You should also use gel pads to prevent the wear out of the cushion at the heel or use special high heel shoes with good cushion for the feet. Believe me it is not a work out for the feet and leg and prevention is better than cure.