Are killer high heels killing your feet and damaging your health?

A beautiful pair of Louboutin or Jimmy Choo shoes with high heels might make you feel a million dollars but they come at a price to your health.

Naturally, there's the issue of toppling over after a few gin and tonics but experts are worried that killer heels are causing health problems for women.

And perhaps a few men as well.

The general rule of thumb is that the higher the heel, the greater the damage.

How high is too high?

This depends. Understandably, high heels cause problems for feet. They put pressure on the front of your foot.

A two-inch heel increases pressure on the ball of your foot by about 52% with each step. Wearing a three-inch heel will increase that pressure to 79%.

This extra strain on the forefoot can lead to hammer-toe deformities, bunions, callouses and Morton's neuroma, a thickening of the nerves between the toes which can cause pain and numbness.

Jan Vickery, lead physiotherapist at AXA PPP healthcare , said: "If you wear high heels daily you may also find that your Achilles tendon at the back of your ankle changes, becoming tight, thickened and shortened.

 Body and sole

High heels tend to push your body weight forward and so you need to work harder to counteract this and prevent yourself from toppling over.

This can place extra strain on your knees and can even alter the natural curvature of your back. This can lead to knee and back pain. If you already have problems in these areas, wearing heels for extended periods could make them worse.

"High heels can be a great fashion accessory but, from the point of view of the foot, wearing high heels habitually isn’t a good idea. The joints of the feet can be damaged by wearing high heels, and this can cause deformities and some forms of arthritis," said Jan.

 A time to heel

Keeping your high heels for special occasions will save you some of the problems that come from wearing them on a daily basis. For everyday wear, try to keep to heels no more than about 1¼ high.

Jan recommends moderation.

"Wear your heels for as short a period as possible, taking them off when you need to walk longer distances or when you’re sitting, and carry some flat, supportive shoes to change into."

Designer Vivienne Westwood would probably not agree.

She said: "Shoes must have very high heels and platforms to put women's beauty on a pedestal."

Listen to your body

Taking care of your feet doesn’t mean a lifetime in flats. These tips should help you reduce the impact that wearing high heels has on your feet and body.

"Try some shock absorbing pads and callous protectors for the parts of your feet that hurt the most. You should find these in most chemists," said Jan.

"When you take your high heels off, move your foot in a circular motion. Stretch your Achilles tendon by stretching your legs out in front of you and pushing your heels down and your toes up or stand with your front foot on a step, keeping your knee straight drop your heel below the stair level.

"Keep fit and work on your overall body posture and muscle tone. Pilates-type exercises are excellent for building good postural control.

"Wear shoes with varying heel heights. This will give your tendons and joints a rest from holding the same position.

"Most of all, listen to your body. You’ll know when high heels are placing too much strain on your body."

All the Women's Shoe Emoji Are High Heels but a ballet flat icon might be the newest addition to your texting vocabulary.

 

The humble ballet flat might be approaching its zenith.

A proposal to create a woman's flat shoe emoji is up for a vote by the Unicode Consortium's Emoji Subcomittee on October 23rd. If approved, it would add a blue ballet flat to what — besides a gender-neutral brown oxford and a white sneaker — are currently only high-heeled emoji.

It would also signal another step forward in the efforts to mitigate sexist and gendered imagery in what has become the international visual language.

According to Jennifer 8 Lee, who is vice-chair of the ESC and a co-founder of the Emojination organization, which helps people propose new emoji, the likelihood that the woman's flat shoe will "make it through" — meaning be approved to become a new emoji in June 2018 — "is pretty high."

This comes at a time when dressing up (or down, as the case may be) can be a polarizing, or downright controversial, decision. Witness Melania Trump tiptoeing toward a hurricane-bound helicopter in August, or Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Ivanka Trump reading to schoolchildren while wearing vertiginous stilettos in July.

That's in contrast to Gal Gadot, who in May wore flats throughout her Wonder Woman press tour, and Kristen Stewart, who spoke out the same month against the Cannes Film Festival's dictum against women wearing flats: "People get very upset at you if you don't wear heels or whatever," she told the Hollywood Reporter. "If you're not asking guys to wear heels and a dress then you can't ask me either."

The pushback against what can be an uncompromising, restrictive dress code is right up there with wearing a pantsuit as a nod to feminist activism. To wit: Evan Rachel Wood's year of red-carpet suiting. "I myself felt pressure a lot of times that I had to look or dress a certain way, especially growing up in the industry," Wood told Vanity Fair. "I thought I would go the other way and reach out to a little girl who is like me, possibly."

This follows Google's May 2016 call for a more balanced representation of genders and professions in emoji, and the introduction in June of three non-gendered emoji (a child, an adult, and an elder).

Kate Middleton's alleged high heels hack is absolute genius

 

It's no secret that Kate Middleton is a seemingly superhuman being. The Duchess of Cambridge juggles demanding royal duties, motherhood, and her third pregnancy with so much grace, we're doubtful that she's ever publicly displayed so much as a grimace on her face. After years of experience, we're certain that she has some tricks up her sleeve. And now, we *think* we've figured out how she manages to glide around in high heels without ever breaking a sweat.

No, Kate Middleton does not have superhuman feet immune to pain, nor does she simply stand and suffer in silence. According to Vanity Fair, the answer is leather sole inserts.

Vanity Fair‘s insiders claimed back in 2015 that Kate's leather shoe sole du choix is Alice Bow, crafted by British footwear designer Rachel Bowditch. The incredibly comfy shoe inserts reportedly turn all-day high heel wearing into an easy feat. If anyone should know how important that is, it's a Duchess whose job requires ample hiking in heels as part of her royal duties.

Kate has ordered a couple of packets, she thinks they are great,' the insider told VF of the soles, which are handmade in Britain from the finest Italian leather.

There has been talk of the Duchess wearing the insoles, but we cannot comment either way,” a spokesperson for Alice Bow said back in 2015. “We have seen a massive surge in site visits however.”

Considering Kate Middleton's affinity for L.K. Bennett pumps and Stuart Weitzman stilettos, we'd wager she still keeps those leather soles close by, too.

Sadly for us, the Duchess of Cambridge remains out of the public eye and resting at home in Kensington Palace as she battles Hyperemesis Gravidarum, a rare early-pregnancy condition that causes severe nausea, vomiting, and dehydration. Meaning we won't be seeing much of the Duchess or her gorgeous royal shoe collection for a while. In the meantime, we're sending her all our well wishes, and hoping she takes this time to give her toes a rest, too.