Now, they are extending a warning about the type of heel you wear. A study in this week's Lancet warns that wearing wide-heeled shoes can increase a woman's risk for osteoarthritis.
Knee osteoarthritis is twice as common in women as it is in men.
Researchers from the Spaulding Rehabilitation Institute in Boston say the reason has to be based on more than gender differences. They say the pressures on the knee are the same when men and women walk barefoot, therefore biomechanical differences are not to blame for the statistical differences. Researchers looked at the change in pressures on the knee joint when walking barefoot and when walking in shoes with a 4 to 5 cm wide heel. In addition, they looked at the change in pressure on the knee when wearing a shoe with a 1 to 2 cm wide heel. They found both wide and narrow heels forced a pressure on the knee joint 26 percent and 22 percent greater than when walking barefoot.