Stiletto shoes damage the Achilles tendon

Health: Stiletto shoes damage the Achilles tendon

(16.07.2010) Shoes with high heels, so-called "high-heeled shoes" or "high heels", damage the Achilles tendon afterwards. If the high-heeled shoes are worn regularly, chronic pain can be the result. Physicians and scientists have found out in an investigation that wearing the shoes can stunt the Achilles tendon. Affected women, who after wearing the high heels with flat shoes exchanged, often suffer severe heel pain.

Many women have a high affinity for high heel shoes. But the so-called high-heeled shoes can sustainably endanger the health. Because the shoes with the high heels sustainably damage the Achilles tendons. The result: severe pain while walking. Researchers from the Universities of Manchester and Vienna yesterday presented their new study on this topic in the "Journal of Experimental Biology". In the study, the scientists studied the effects of "high heels" on the human foot. The result: The frequent wearing of the shoes, the muscle fibers shorten, as the heel is pressed by the high-heeled running constantly upwards. To make walking possible at all, the Achilles tendon compensates for the unnatural height difference. Through this process, the muscle fibers shorten when women regularly wear such shoes.

According to research findings, the Achilles tendons do not shorten, but in some women they become thicker and immovable. The women then wear shoes without heels again, they sometimes feel great pain, because the Achilles tendon is no longer flexible enough and can no longer adapt to the new situation.

Before the study began, the scientists looked for participants who regularly wear high heels between 20 and 50 years old and for at least two years, with heels at least five centimeters high. In total, 80 women registered. Among these volunteers, the researchers selected eleven women who experience mild to severe pain when wearing normal shoes again. An approximately equal control group consisted of subjects who never wear high-heeled shoes. The calf muscles of women were measured with a magnetic resonance tomograph during the study. This procedure was used to measure why the pain occurred when the women changed their shoes again. Because the muscle fibers were 13 percent shorter than the participants with flat shoes.

It is best to avoid wearing such shoes. Above all, women should not wear high-heeled shoes regularly. But the authors of the studies point out that such shoes can be worn quietly. Study author Marco Narici: To prevent the shortening of the muscle fibers, it is recommended to do regular gymnastic stretching exercises. (Sb)