Love wearing high heel shoes, but concerned about the effect they may be having on your health? Wearing high heel shoes daily to the office might make a great fashion statement, but they also can be the instigator of a series of postural and health problems. If you are going to wear high heels with any frequency, it's important to know the risks involved. So what problems do you have to watch out for when wearing high heel shoes?
The first problem is that the shape of the shoe throws the body out of alignment. Your weight is shifted forward, and the wearer has to engage a lot of muscular energy in remaining upright. This results in postural shifts including an exaggeration of the curvature of the lower back. If this happens frequently it can lead to tightness and pain in the lower back, and a weakening of the abdominal muscles.
Other problems to look out for include tensions in the neck and shoulders that comes from the effort of balancing, as well as pain in the ankles and feet. The ankles and feet necessarily take a lot of strain while trying to compensate for their new position.Lastly, this type of footwear interrupts the natural and unconscious process of your feet assessing the surface you're standing on and relaying that information to your brain - the result is a constant feeling of being slightly off balance.
Does all this mean you should never wear this kind of footwear? Of course not. But you would be wise to alternate these with flatter fare so that your body doesn't have to cope with a new alignment on a daily basis.
