NEW YORK, June 18, 2007

High Heels Take Heavy Toll On Feet

Shoes Look Great, But They Can Cause A Lot Of Problems

By Caitlin A. Johnson
  • Play CBS Video Video High Heel Danger

    "The Early Show" medical correspondent Dr. Emily Senay reports on the health risks associated with wearing high heels. The shoes can cause corns, calluses, hammertoes and stress fractures.

  • Video Pains You Shouldn't Ignore

    Dr. Mallika Marshall tells Tracy Smith there are five kinds of pains our bodies could get that we should not ignore- chest and shoulder, back, abdominal, calf pain and burning in the feet or legs.

  • High heels look great and are fashionable, but they can wreak havoc on a woman's feet. Photo

    High heels look great and are fashionable, but they can wreak havoc on a woman's feet.  (CBS/The Early Show)

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(CBS)  With summer in full swing, lots of women will be slipping and sliding into their high heels and strappy sandals, but fashion and function aren't always a good fit.

"Sex and the City" fans will probably recall that when Sarah Jessica Parker's character Carrie Bradshaw was mugged, the robber demanded that she handed over her Manolo Blahniks.

"Somebody stop him," she famously said. "He took my strappy sandals!"

Like the fictional Carrie Bradshaw, Lisa Dietz loves shoes, but a painful foot condition forced her to kick the high heel habit.

"For the past number of years I've had a problem with my toe ... and I couldn't bend it and it became painful," she told The Early Show medical correspondent Dr. Emily Senay. "I'd like to wear nice shoes. Unfortunately, with the problem, I've had to resort to more utilitarian looking shoes."

High heels can lead to a host of problems such as corns, calluses, bunions, hammertoes, stress fractures and painful nerve damage. Surgery helped ease Dietz's pain, but eventually her goal is to get those sexy shoes back.

"Shoes are challenging to be on feet. In fact it's hard to be a foot," said Dr. David Levine, Dietz's foot surgeon. "It's at the bottom of gravity. It has to walk and carry our weight for, hopefully, 80-plus years and we stuff them into things that sometimes do and sometimes don't exactly fit right."

But nothing, he said, is more challenging than a high heel shoe like a Manolo or a Jimmy Choo.

"These are challenges to certain feet that can't tolerate high shoes and they're perfectly acceptable in feet that can," he said.

Dr. Levine says to maximize your foot fetish, there are subtle things you can do to minimize damage:

  • Make sure the toe box is wider than the front of your foot
  • When shopping, be sure to try on both shoes
  • Shop in the evening when feet are larger due to swelling
  • Wear lower shoes as a rule and make a higher heel the exception

    Dietz won't give up on fashionable shoes and plans to go back to pumps.

    "In fact my closet still has them in there," she said. "They're kinda old but I'm not throwing them away yet."

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    Add a Comment
    by blindersoff June 18, 2007 12:36 PM PDT
    These feet are not ***, they are all veiny.
    Reply to this comment
    by toeslayer2000 June 18, 2007 7:21 PM PDT
    Enjoyed the article but need to point out desipite anecdotal evidence there is no evidence to support heeled share more injury causing than other shoes. Quite the opposite in fact. Also a small but important point a person with an abnormal fixation on the foot might be called a foot fetsihist but when it is shoes, they are shie fetishists or restifists. Very rare to find someone attracted to feet and shoes.

    Cameron
    Reply to this comment
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