Wearing High Heels Shortens Calf Muscles, Say Researchers

Women who are used to wearing high heels often complain about pain when they switch to flatter heeled shoes and researchers in the UK may have found out why this is so.

Women who wear high heels have shorter calf muscles and stiffer tendons, found researchers – and this is what tends to cause pain when they wear lower heeled shoes.

Researchers claim that wearing high heels regularly, impacts the calf muscles as well as the Achilles tendon – MRI scans revealed that women who habitually wore high heels had, on an average calf muscles that were 13% shorter than women who did not wear high heels.

Also the women who wore high heels were seen to have tendons that were stiffer and thicker.

The reason for this is the fact that when wearing high heels, the calf muscles shorten and that causes the fibers in the muscle itself to shorten. Since the calf muscles contract and shorten they don’t function optimally. Since these changes take place among the calf muscles of high heel wearers, they find that using flat footed shoes causes them pain.

So do you have to consign your smartest shoes to the donate pile? Not quite – researchers suggest doing stretching exercises for better calf muscles and also rotating between the kind and height of heels that one wears.

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