Healing power of stilettos
By Elaine Carey
Toronto Star
January 9, 2004
Forget the housework. Put on your high heels and go dancing - your knees
will thank you for it.
That's the conclusion of a British study published today which found that
stiletto heels don't lead to knee joint problems and in fact, may prevent
them.
The study found a significant link between regularly dancing in three-inch
heels and a reduced risk of getting arthritis in the knees. In fact, women
who wore any size of heel had fewer knee problems, although the effect
wasn't as great.
About two per cent of women over 55 suffer from knee osteoarthritis, twice
the rate for men. So many women have this problem that doctors speculated
that wearing high heels might trigger the condition.
But the study found the opposite. In most cases the heels offered a
"protective effect, rather than the hypothesized increase in risk," said the
study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
"It is very unlikely that prolonged wearing of high-heeled shoes represents
a risk factor for symptomatic osteoarthritis of the knee in women," it
concludes.
But a leading Ontario chiropractor notes that high heels put the entire
female body out of alignment, putting more stress on all the joints and
forcing the body to work harder to compensate.
Still, what the study found to be a significant contributor to symptomatic
osteoarthritis of the knee was being overweight before the age of 40,
especially if the weight was gained in early adulthood, said Margaret
Thorogood of the University of Warwick, the study's lead researcher. Those
women had a 30-fold increase in knee arthritis.
"You've got to keep the weight off between 20 and 40," she said in an
interview.
And women who spent a considerable amount of time on their knees doing
demanding work like scrubbing floors were also at more risk.
The study looked at 111 women between ages 50 and 70 who had varying degrees
of knee pain and compared them to a control group.
While slightly more than half of the women with knee arthritis had regularly
worn 3-inch heels, fully two-thirds of the healthy women had.
Researchers used a small group so they could develop a time line of their
lives that would take into account their various occupations, time spent
doing housework and wearing various types of heels, competitive sports,
cigarette smoking, child bearing and using hormone replacement therapy
(HRT).
Competitive sports, smoking and HRT were also found not to have any effect
on the risk of getting arthritis of the knees.
As well as housework, jobs that involve bending a lot, such as being a
kindergarten teacher, would also increase the risk, Thorogood said.
They may not get knee arthritis but wearing stiletto heels throws a woman's
whole body out of alignment, said Stan Gorchynski, chair of the board of the
Ontario Chiropractic Association.
To prove it, try standing face-to-face with another person, hold your arms
straight out and push up with your arms while the other person pushes down
on them.
Then try the same thing, standing barefoot on a phone book with your heels
hanging down off the back to the floor.
"You don't have half the power you do when you're flat-footed, he said.
"The issue here is general stress on the whole system from wearing heels."
Heels change the whole mechanics of your body, thrusting your pelvis back
and your lower back forward, he said, and that requires the body to do more
work, causing more wear and tear on all the joints.
"Heels accentuate the buttocks, the walking posture and the female anatomy,"
he concedes. "More attention is drawn to a woman in heels because her whole
carriage changes.
"But women are experiencing physical hardship to look attractive - so men
should appreciate them that much more."
