For 250 years medical scientists have propagandized about the health hazards of high-heeled shoes, which originated four centuries ago. Physicians, however, largely unaware of their own profession's tradition, keep reinventing the diagnostic wheel. This professional amnesia has held back the momentum of the process of educating the public. Consequently, despite these warnings, millions of women...

Use of modified shoes and insole materials has been widely advocated to treat low back symptoms from running impacts, although considerable uncertainty remains regarding the effects of these devices on the rate of shock transmission to the spine. This study investigated the effects of shoes and insole materials on a) the rate of shock transmission to the spine, b) the temporal response of spina...

The mortality of 833 male tannery workers known to have been employed in the industry in 1939 and who were followed up to the end of 1982 was studied. A total of 573 men had been employed in making leather tanned by vegetable extracts for soles and heels, and 260 men had used chrome tanning to make leather for the upper parts of shoes. No significant excesses of deaths were found for any of the...

BACKGROUND Little is known about the effects of walking in high heels on joints in the legs. Since osteoarthritis of the knee is twice as common in women as in men, we investigated torques (forces applied about the leg joints) of women who wore high-heeled shoes. METHODS We studied 20 healthy women who were comfortable wearing high-heeled shoes. The women walked with their own high-heeled sho...

Plantar fasciitis is characterised by pain involving the medial calcaneal tubercle that is exacerbated after periods of nonweightbearing (Tountas & Fornasier, 1996). Although the pathogenesis is poorly understood, lower limb biomechanics or foot types that result in a lowered and elongated medial longitudinal arch have been widely cited as causal factors in the development of the condition (Cor...

The optimal condition in speed, step rate, and step length of human walking has been reported in terms of temporal consistency, energy cost, and attentional demand. No study, however, has been conducted on the optimal condition in terms of spatial variability of walking. This study examined whether there is an optimal walking speed with minimum intrasubject variability in step length and step w...

Theories of motor-skill acquisition postulate that attentional demands of motor execution decrease with practice. Hence, motor experts should experience less attentional resource conflict when performing a motor task in their domain of expertise concurrently with a demanding cognitive task. We assessed cognitive and motor performance in high-heel experts and novices who were performing a workin...

Charity clothes The explanation for this is quite simple. Anna is a vagrant. She dresses shabbily in an old, brown belted coat, thick, laddered stockings and a pair of down-at-heel, lace-up shoes, given to her from the clothing store of a voluntary organisation. She carries a green plastic shopping bag which contains all her possessions. She seldom has money unless she begs for it. She is one o...

BACKGROUND Biomechanical factors may play a role in osteoarthritis (OA) development and progression. Previous biomechanical studies have indicated that types of footwear may modulate forces across the knee joint, and high heeled womens' shoes in particular are hypothesised to be detrimental to lower limb joint health. This analysis of data from a case control study investigated persistent users...