GREENSBORO, N.C. — Recently CBS Morning’s Gayle King and Brook Shields both created a lot of buzz after wearing Crocs instead of high heels on the red carpet. Gayle said she was have a tendonitis flare up and Brook had foot surgery. Their fashion choices are bringing up a lot of debate about the danger of high heels.
Research from the University of Maryland shows before the pandemic about 16,000 women went to the ER every year because of high heel related injuries. So WFMY News 2’s Ben Briscoe talked about how to make safe choices for your feet with Dr. Snow Daws, an orthopedic surgeon from Novant Health.
DAWS: High heels puts a lot of pressure through your forefoot. So your toes and the metatarsal bones, which are the small bones that support from your mid foot to your forefoot. The thing people hear about most commonly are bunions when the big toe curves inward and that can be related to wearing high heels for a very long time. But other than that, people get stress fractures. People get a condition which is pain on the bottom of the foot, along the ball of the foot, and that can all be related to high heels.
BRISCOE: What is the safe level of high heel to wear?
DAWS: That's probably a little bit hard to say. I often tell people, I think a one and a half to two inch heel in general is fine. And I tell people, wear whatever you want. Just know that sometimes if you're wearing a four inch high heel for a very long period of time, your feet are probably going to hurt. So just be careful, be mindful, do what you want to do, but just know that you may be making poor choices and then you may have some foot pain. But in general, I think about a one and a half to two inch heel is well tolerated by most patients.
BRISCOE: Are there types of heels that are better? Like are wedges better?
DAWS: Yes, absolutely. I tell patients all the time that come see me specifically for Achilles tendonitis, like Gayle King has. A wedge is a great shoe, because the back of it is generally open. So it's not rubbing on the Achilles tendon where it hurts. And then a little bit of a lift in the back of the shoe, a one and a half to two inch wedge is great because it takes pressure off the tendon and then the tendon doesn't have to work as hard when you're when you're walking around. So wedges are great options. And then the other thing I tell people when they come to me and I'm like, you need more sensible shoes, they roll their eyes and they're I want something cute. But there are cute options. Every shoe company now is mindful of this.