The Long-Term Damage
In one study, Australian researchers studied nine young women in their late teens to early 30s who wore high heels for at least 40 hours a week for work for a minimum of two years, and 10 young women who rarely, if ever wore heels, as a control. All of the women were asked to walk multiple times across a 26-foot walkway that contained a plate to gauge the forces generated as they walked. The control group crossed the walkway barefoot, while the women who wore heels were asked to cross both barefoot and in heels.
While researchers correctly guessed that women who wore heels regularly would walk differently than the control group, even while barefoot, the extent of those differences was surprising. The study, which was published in The Journal of Applied Physiology, showed that:
● Women habituated to wearing heels walked with shorter, more forceful strides than the control group.
● Women habituated to wearing heels have a stride where feet are positioned in a flexed, pointed-toe position, even when these women were walking barefoot.
● Habitually wearing heels resulted in the fibers of the wearer’s calf muscles shortening, so these women put much greater mechanical strain on their calf muscles than the control group.
● For the control group, walking involved primarily stretching and stressing tendons, especially the Achilles tendon; whereas heel wearers walked by mostly engaging their muscles.
What Does It Mean?
These differences are significant. Studies into optimal “muscle-tendon” efficiency while walking happens when the muscle stays approximately the same length and the tendon lengthens, then uses its stored elastic energy to contract when the foot pushes off the ground. By stretching and straining already-shortened calf muscles, heel wearers walked less efficiently both with and without heels and required more energy to walk the same distance as people who were used to wearing flats.