Are High Heels Unhealthy?
Posted by: Leonora Epstein
Filed in:
style
11:40AM, Monday October 19th 2009
“Style-conscious women are worse than smokers,” declares the Sydney Morning Herald. Why? We sacrifice our comfort and health for high heels and continue to buy them like addicts. (Way to stereotype.) The Herald claims that what’s worse is that we don’t even know the half of it: Not only are sexy pumps wreaking havoc on your feet, but they’re also potential culprits for infertility and schizophrenia. That’s right people—your Jimmy Choos (well, in our case, Nine West!) are silent baby killers and mind effers! Explains one expert, the wearing of high heels distorts your pelvic alignment and supposedly messes with your menstrual cycle, in turn having a negative effect on fertility. As for mental side effects, some researchers in Sweden have explained that the alignment of the feet in high heels could possibly manipulate the transmission of dopamine (the chemical that makes you happy): “After heeled shoes are introduced into a population, the first cases of schizophrenia appear and then the increase in prevalence of schizophrenia follows the increase in use of heeled shoes.”
Make you want to run away? Just don’t do it in your five-inch stilettos. [Sydney Morning Herald]
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tigerstripe
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 11:34 am: [report]
I had to stop wearing heels because my feet are too wide and they were getting bunions (ack). But I’m not shaking in my heels about the schizophrenia or infertility.
Fern
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 12:03 pm: [report]
Does this sound like a case of correlation without actual causation to anyone else? I have a hard time believing that heels cause schizophrenia…
Raugiel
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 12:49 pm: [report]
I would be more worried about back pain and headaches. That’s why I had to retire my tallest pairs.
heythere
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 02:55 pm: [report]
Darn, I’m going to be a non baby giver, crazy heel wearing gyal..great
AFriskyBug
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 06:10 pm: [report]
Oh, please! The prevalence of schizophrenia is 1%, among all races, all countries.
canadiancutie
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 09:47 pm: [report]
I own one pair of heels and they’re about 2 inches high. And I still can’t be forced to wear them often enough to break ‘em in. I loathe heels. I was palpably relieved when I fell in love with a man who is 5’7” - equal in height to me. I was done with ‘em for good!
Anniushka
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 10:03 pm: [report]
Hmmm. Seems a little far-fetched. Anyway, ankle, knee, and back pain/injury are quite enough to keep me from daily heel wearing, without adding schizophrenia to the mix.
My highest heels are 3” and I hardly ever wear them; they’re “going out” shoes. The highest heels I wear as daytime shoes are about 2, 2.5”. I’m most comfortable in sneakers—in fact, I’m wearing my bright yellow suede ones right now.
Ellis
wrote on October 20 2009 @ 06:37 am: [report]
Yeah, the bit about schizophrenia is absolute garbage. The alignment of your feet manipulates the transmission of dopamine? Really? And it does it so much that you acquire a largely genetic severe mental illness that typically begins with changes in glutamate, not dopamine? Where are these people from, the 14th century? Are we going to apply leeches to these ladies feet to cure them?
I can think of many reasons why the use of high heels and the rate of diagnosis of schizophrenia are correlated, but none of them require forgetting everything I’ve learned about science since 7th grade and deciding that high heels magically make people crazy.
LadieBug
wrote on October 24 2009 @ 11:38 am: [report]
I was just at a wedding last night and I got made fun of because I was wearing a pretty dress and a pair of ballet flat crocs… I’m not going to hurt my feet while I’m sick!!
joyy
wrote on October 24 2009 @ 12:48 pm: [report]
I’ll hop on the ‘bs’ bandwagon in regards to the schizophrenia thing as well - though my angle on it is that it does nothing to explain schizophrenia in men ...
Iammina
wrote on October 27 2009 @ 01:33 pm: [report]
Oh, I hope not, I considering anything under two inches walking shoes. I can’t give up my high heels and I wear them every day even with jeans. I like that long lean look and I am only five-five.