They say a girl can never have too many shoes, (well I don’t know about that). but lets chat about one particular type of shoe, the high heel.
If you are a patient of mine already and you’ve come into the clinic wearing high heels, you’ve probably heard me say this to you before. High heels are my least favourite type of shoes.
They can cause so many different injuries/ problems for not only your spine, but your feet and ankles, knees and hips.
Let’s start with the feet, not only do they look uncomfortable to wear and personally… I don’t know how you ladies do it.
But the height of the heel will determine how much weight and pressure you are putting on the ball of your foot. Which means an uneven weight distribution. And a greater chance of damaging the forefoot..
Next is the knees….. with the extra weight on the ball of your foot, you are then putting excess strain on your knees and are forcing your knees forward in order to keep balance, this is extra stress and can lead to functional issues of the knee, causing pain, or in the long term early wear and tear…
Then we have the impact on your hips. We see a lot of hip/ pelvic misalignments when people are regularly wearing heels, I regularly see people standing on one foot more than the other or rocking from side to side to give one foot relief when wearing heels. and when your hip is placed in an unnatural position, you lose control of your entire posture,
All of this combined Essentially leads to bad function because the last thing I see with high heels is that your posture as it is pushed forward causing your lower back to lean backwards like a pregnant posture and this causes the joints in the lower back to compress. causing stress on your spine and the muscles And if you have an uneven pelvis also this can lead to back, neck, leg and foot pain… and with long term use could cause early arthritis in the spine.
You may even see with wearing high heels that your lumbar spine may start to flatten and lose that natural curve in your spine.
If wearing heels is an absolute must for you, try to wear heels no higher than two inches.
Where them on days that you will be sitting for periods of time. Where them every other day and give your back a rest. Or if you absolutely have to wear heels because they look good and make sure you get regular checkups from your chiropractor like me to make sure that you’re not causing any permanent changes to your feet knees more importantly your spine..