Arno

. You jump, balance, and do little tricks. Good for you! Explain to them that wearing heels is an athletic skill that first has to be learnt and then practiced like any other athletic skill. With your own learning experience for background you would meke an excellent coach for those starting out from scratch.

Your observation shows that the actual physical heel height is uninformative unless shoe size is also specified. I have previously suggested that the best way to compare heel heights is to refer all heel heights to what they would be on a size 9 (US ladies) shoe. You can get the conversioin factors from the length to size tables on Payless Web site. But there is also a rough and ready method for determining this equivalent height that depends on the fact that for size nine the heel-to-toe foot length is exactly ten inches. On a piece of paper, measure the distance between the front of your big toe and the back of your heel in inches. Divide the measured height of the heels you wear by that number and multiply it by ten. The result is what your heel height corresponds to on a size nine shoe.

Arno

There are many things wrong with the article which recycles uncritical views of the podiatric establishmant but the most galling is the attempted explanation of shin splints by doctor Novella: "... because tendons in the toes attach to the tibia, when the toes tug, it can register in the shins.' This man just has no knowledge of foot anatomy and poses as an expert. Tendons do not connect bone to bone, they connect bone to muscle. The tendons in question connect to Flexor longus digitorum and Flexor longus hallucis, two muscles in the thigh that power the toes as you walk. The article also does not mention the most basic fact that high heel problems are not caused by heel height but by narrow shoes because most high heels are made in only one width called "medium" which is actually narrow.

Speaking of ebb and flow, some have reported the desire to wear heels while having sex. Does it go away when sex is over?

Becky and Vanity - I apologize. My only excuse is that even though I did not start it I had to straighten out some uppity kids.

genebujold - You claim an abundance of high heels available in wide sizes from Nordstrom’s and other leading stores. I checked Nordstrom’s Web site and found it not to be true. They did have a few wider sizes, mostly for heels under three inches, not for all manufacturers and all styles, never for all sizes in a style, and nothing designated 4A or 3E. I also checked the Web site for Saks Fifth Avenue for designer shoes between $200 and $900 in price. They listed numerous designers but only Stuart Weizman had a few wider sizes, and again not for all sizes in a model. On the Web Fredericks does not have any wider sizes at all and Sexy Shoes shows only one (4212) out of a dozen or more styles they sell. These exceptions just prove the rule that high heels are made only in one width - at least over 95% of the time.

You also expressed your opinion about damage from wearing high heels so I might as well put things in perspective. First of all, foot problems that are attributed to wearing high heels are the same problems that plague runners and are well known to sports medicine specialists. Tendonitis is one of them and it also occurs in ballet dancers. But to include knees, hips and back as being impacted by high heel wear is simply silly. And blaming high heels for osteoarthritis of the knee is dead wrong. When the Harvard study claiming this came out it was obvious that they did not know anything about it for they had exactly zero observations in support of a theory that paid no attention to the skeletal differences between men and women. For a more current medical assessment of high heels, go to:

http://washingtontimes.com/national/20030929-103356-6719r.htm

This should straighten you out about those “false studies” you talk about. Let me make it absolutely clear that I never opined anything about what a person wears: it is their business and theirs alone. Furthermore, it was not my intent to make anyone feel like a schmuck. However, if you find that the shoe fits, don’t hesitate to put it on.

My, my, you do have an attitude, Daz.

This was supposed to be about lieing about heel height but drifted off course. That is no different than lieing about your age but various other issues came in that I want to comment on. First some sorely needed facts need to be brought into the dispute between Becky and Daz. It is important to know here that high heels that are comfortable to wear must fit well from the beginning. Susan, known from the other forum, was very firm about that and she wore nothing but the highest heels, 24/7. And the critical factor for this is width. Now it so happens that not everyone’s foot has the same width but high heels are made in only one width, called “Medium.” It was previously called “B” because there were then also other widths like A, C, and D that have passed into history. This leaves a fairly large group of women who have to wear shoes that are too tight because “Medium” is too narrow for them. It causes foot troubles and makes the podiatrists rich. They should be agitating for manufacturers to supply the missing widths but they don’t. Instead, they have a wacky solution to the problem: they surgically narrow the feet of women who desperately crave to wear the latest designer shoes. So Daz, you have to give up your superior attitude and start believing women who cannot wear three inch heels, not because of the height but because they can just never get shoes that fit them properly. You did not know the facts but you said a few rash things that you need to apologize for. My second point is about comparing heel heights that seems to bother some. It is obvious that a five inch heel on a size nine shoe forms much less of an incline for the foot than the same heel on a size five shoe does. I once posted a table of equivalent heel heights that correspond to four, five and six inch heels in US size nine but it seems to have scrolled off this board. Here I want to suggest a personal factor that you can use to determine what your heel height corresponds to when scaled up to a US size nine shoe. First, put your bare foot on a sheet of paper. Draw a line behind your heel and another line parallel to it in front of your toes. Measure the distance between these two lines in inches and divide it by ten. This is your personal factor. Now measure the heel height of your shoe and divide it by your personal factor. This tells you what your heel height would be if scaled up to size nine. Or you can go backwards too. If you want to know what a five inch heel on a size nine shoe corresponds to in your shoe size, multiply five (the heel height for size nine) by your personal factor and you get its equivalent in your own shoe size. It is this equivalent height that should be referred to when comparing actual physical heel heights. Some manufacturers will scale the heels according to shoe size but others don’t and to find out which is the case you will need to measure it yourself. And one more thing. It is not true that wearing heels causes knee damage as one of you claims. This misinformation keeps popping up despite studies showing that it is false.

I think you are right about designers not caring about scaling heel height, but they should. Because unless the scaling is accurate the styling will change with shoe size. In their pursuit for esthetics they also ignore things like the actual shape of the foot, with the result that some women now have their feet surgically altered to fit into the narrow designer shoes they desire.

Thanks, Tom. Slim - foot length is measured in inches from heel to toe. 25 centimeters is ten inches and if you click on the link to the Payless site that Genebujold posted you will see that it corresponds to size 9. As to GrayLion's tables, I have no idea where they came from or what they purport to show.

Before Christmas I posted a table showing how heel height should vary with shoe size. It made use of the "length to size" table at the Payless web site and showed the equivalent height of a stiletto heel when shoe size goes from size three to size fourteen (US ladies). There were three columns, one each for a reference height of four, five or six inches on a size nine shoe, and I did it for all full sizes. Size nine makes a good nominal reference size since eight and a half is the average ladies shoe size in the US. This information allows functional comparison of heel heights on shoes of different size. Simply find out what height it would become on a size nine shoe and call that its "effective" height or something similar. I tried to keep it simple but the table can be easily extended if need be. I don't see the table any more and assume that it has scrolled off into an archive of some sort.

Very interesting alternative, Heelfan. Is that how NASA engineers working on those O-rings scaled the ambient temperature? And Firefox, thanks for correcting the error. Also, using your proportion is a neat alternative and goes to show that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Had I known about it I would have plugged it into Excel and created the table automatically instead of manually calculating every value in the table.

When a stiletto heel is said to be “five inches” high it may not be literally true because the heel height must change as the shoe size changes or the profile of the shoe will become distorted. Some manufacturers follow this rule quite well (Sexy Shoes is an example) but others adjust it approximately or not at all. To figure out just how the heel height should be scaled with shoe size you have to know how the length of the foot changes with shoe size. I discovered that this information is available on Payless Web site in the form of “inch to size” tables that relate heel-to-toe distance in inches to women’s shoe size, from size three to size fourteen. Using this information I constructed the table below that shows how stiletto heels that are four, five, or six inches high on a size nine shoe should be scaled for other shoe sizes. I chose size nine because it is the nearest full size to eight and a half, which is the average women’s size in the U.S., and also because for that shoe size the heel-to-toe length is exactly 10 inches which simplifies scaling.

Size..Four inch..Five inch..Six inch

...3........3.2..........4.0.........4.8

...4........3.33........4.16........4.99

...5........3.48........4.34........5.21

...6........3.6..........4.5..........5.4

...7........3.73........4.66........5.59

...8........3.88........4.84........5.81

...9........4.0..........5.0..........6.0

..10.......4.13.........5.16........6.19

..11.......4.28.........5.34........6.41

..12.......4.4...........5.5..........6.6

..13.......4.53.........5.66........6.79

..14.......4.68.........5.84........7.01

If you want intermediate values you will just have to make a graph for yourself using numbers from the table. Dots are there because spaces I had disappeared.

Arno

Highluc - I looked at that podiatric propaganda. They do acknowledge that "interestingly" some people claim to get relief by wearing high heels but then go on to push orthotics (very expensive and doubtfully effective) as the right treatment for flat feet.

Congrats, Slim. You were lucky enough to find a doctor who was not brainwashed about high heels. From your experienvce I would judge that for fallen arches the optimum heel height is more like four inches than three that I mentioned in my post.

Laurie - There was no copy editor to help me. Do you want to be one? Highluc - Thanks, go ahead. And thanks to others.

This is a biology lesson mainly intended for Doctor Shoe. What you were taught in your foot anatomy lesson is void of biology and so biased that you should throw it out and make a fresh start. Begin by noting first-hand experiences of people who know something about wearing high heels and do not parrot what is accepted as truisms without any proof by the podiatric profession. First and foremost, good fit is essential for wearing of high heels. This should not come as a surprise since that is recommended for athletic shoes, hiking boots and military footwear as well. But the so-called “experts” on high heels that taught you have never even heard of it. The multitudinous complaints that they amass against high heels are results of poorly fitting shoes and are also guaranteed to happen when poorly fitting flats are worn. Susan (the original) has made the importance of good fit abundantly clear, and so has Laurie and a girl named Cheryl on the other board. They are heavy duty stiletto heel people. Two of them wear nothing but high stiletto heels and can’t even get into flats any more. This is not a disease and is only a handicap if for some reason you are forced to go back to wearing flats. The advice to wear alternately high heels and low heels is almost on the mark, but distorts what happens. No two pairs of shoes are exactly alike which means that the pressure points in any two pairs of shoes are different. Changing from one pair of shoes to another will change the pressure environment around the foot, regardless of the heel height, and will give relief if the shoe was uncomfortable. Proof is that Cheryl, who never wears flats, has observed and reported this. Next point is that shortened tendons do not qualify as damage. Damage to tendons means torn tendons, not change in their length. It is normal that both calf muscles and their associated tendons adjust themselves to the load they have to carry. In high heel configuration the outside muscles in the calf that connect to the heel bone through the Achilles tendon have to work in a more contracted position than wearing flats. Contraction beyond normal limits is a strain, does not yield much power, and may result in sore muscles. But over time the resting state from which the contraction starts adjusts itself to the new optimum length and the efficiency of the muscles is restored. Note that this is a self-regulating process, and it is possible to get used to both high heels and flats if the proportion of time spent in each mode is approximately consistent. Likewise, the bones and joints respond to stresses that they are subjected to. Bones in particular are not permanent structures but their mass is slowly being dissolved by one set of bone cells while another set of bone cells keeps adding to their mass.The result is that after a few years of this the bone has been completely replaced from within. But this is also a restructuring process and responds to stresses carried by the bone. As an example, ultrasonics shows that the walls of the long bones in the arm of a baseball pitcher are thicker in the pitching arm than they are in the other arm. The same process also comes into play in shaping the arch and adjusting the configuration of joints within the foot when high heels are worn. As a result, wearing high heels will gradually bend the arch of the foot. As the bones and joints adjust themselves to the existing stresses and the arch gradually bends itself the distance between the heel bone and the ball of the foot becomes shorter. The result is that in the medium time frame the effective shoe size begins to decrease and shoes that fit snugly before become loose. In the long term, if nothing but high heels are worn, the foot gets shaped so firmly into high heel configuration that it will not want to go flat any more. Combined with a shortened calf muscle-tendon combination, this is the optimum way to wear high heels. The muscles work at their peak efficiency and the shape of the foot gives good control over movement, leading to a natural and efficient gait. This is true of both Susan and Cheryl, and it is not a disease, nor is it an out-of-control fetish thing. They both find that staying in stiletto heels all the time is totally comfortable and does not cause any distress at all. But it is a lifestyle choice that goes agaist current fashion and podiatric advice (if that is what their muddled thinking can be called). It is dictated by strong motivation or even by physical addiction to wearing high heels that I have explained elsewhere. It helps too if your foot is of “medium" width because otherwise you will have great difficulties getting shoes to fit. And now a word about the benefits of high heel wear. The reverse of bending the arch is having fallen arches or “flat foot.” It happens to people who spend much of the day standing or walking around. It may become a problem in middle age or later, although it can happen at an earlier age too. Typically, when it starts to happen, people notice that their shoe size is getting bigger because straightening of the arch pushes the heel bone backward. This is the exact opposite of what happens when you start to wear high heels. Since this is the case, the obvious way to reverse fallen arches is to get into high heels. Several posts here note that wearing high heels is indeed helpful for painful feet. I attribute this to the arch-forming aspect of high heel wear. It is very probable that, for a cop on the beat, wearing three-inch cowboy boots would help him avoid an occupational hazard that goes with the job - flat feet. ARNO