Paying The Health Price For Wearing High Heels

[sashatheelf]

Amazing how many reasons some women have to not look good. If you want to clomp around in your flip flops that's fine with me.

WOW, just relax...

I'm not even sure how to respond to this... it's nearly appauling.

Having 4 toes, a bunion or 2, and hammer toes is better than wearing a cute funky pair of flats? I don't think so.

But i guess it's kinda like smoking. Some people die of it, others smoke for 50 years and have no adverse effects...

[snapback]355970[/snapback]​

wow i love the shoes in your icon.

 

[PetiteGirl]

"The fact is some women are more comfortable in high heels."

He added that jumping suddenly from stilettos to flats - or from daily flip-flops to high heels - was not a good idea.

At last a foot doctor who agrees! I dont know if it is the shape of my arches but high heels a lot more comfortable for me than flats or anything low heeled. I think the fit of the shoe is more important than the height. I try and avoid shoes that really compress or pinch for everyday wear and I think that is why my feet are happy even though all my shoes are very high.

 

[Incroyable]

Nobody should take this away.

 

[PinUpGirl]

Originally posted by Incroyable@Sep 6 2004, 08:02 PM
Nobody should take this away.

[snapback]357616[/snapback]​

 

[dr.shoegal]

Originally posted by sashatheelf@Sep 5 2004, 02:28 AM
wow i love the shoes in your icon.

[snapback]356885[/snapback]​

oh thanks, I do too!!!

 

[Acid]

bitchin' members, please try not to hurt each others feelings.
if we were all wearing the same clothes it would be boring and we would have nobody to b*tch about, just dont do it to the person's face

 

[BBabe]

If Shoe Won't Fit, Fix the Foot? Popular Surgery Raises Concern

Days after her daughter's engagement a year ago, Sheree Reese went to her doctor and said that she would do almost anything to wear stilettos again.

"I was not going to walk down the aisle in sneakers," said Dr. Reese, a 60-year-old professor of speech pathology at Kean University in Union, N.J. She had been forced to give up wearing her collection of high-end, high-heeled shoes because they caused searing pain.
So Dr. Reese, like a growing number of American women, put her foot under the knife. The objective was to remove a bunion, a swelling of the big-toe joint, but the results were disastrous. "The pain spread to my other toes and never went away," she said. "Suddenly, I couldn't walk in anything. My foot, metaphorically, died."
With vanity always in fashion and shoes reaching iconic cultural status, women are having parts of their toes lopped off to fit into the latest Manolo Blahniks or Jimmy Choos. Cheerful how-to stories about these operations have appeared in women's magazines and major newspapers and on television news programs.
But the stories rarely note the perils of the procedures. For the sake of better "toe cleavage," as it is known to the fashion-conscious, women are risking permanent disability, according to many orthopedists and podiatrists.
"It's a scary trend," said Dr. Rock Positano, director of the nonoperative foot and ankle service at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan. Dr. Positano said that his waiting room is increasingly filled with women hobbled by failed cosmetic foot procedures, those done solely to improve the appearance of the foot or help patients fit into fashionable shoes.
More than half of the 175 members of the American Orthopaedic Foot & Ankle Society who responded to a recent survey by the group said that they had treated patients with problems resulting from cosmetic foot surgery. The society will soon issue a statement condemning the procedures, said Rich Cantrall, its executive director.
The American Podiatric Medical Association is also likely to formally discourage medically unnecessary foot operations, said Dr. Glenn Gastwirth, executive director of the group.
" I think it's reprehensible for a physician to correct someone's feet so they can get into Jimmy Choo shoes," said Dr. Sharon Dreeben, an orthopedic surgeon in La Jolla, Calif., who is chairwoman of the foot and ankle society's public education committee.
But advocates for the procedures say that critics simply do not understand the importance of high heels. "Some of these women invest more in their shoes than they do in the stock market," said Dr. Suzanne M. Levine, an Upper East Side podiatrist who is widely quoted in women's magazines and has appeared on network television promoting the procedures.
"Take your average woman and give her heels instead of flats, and she'll suddenly get whistles on the street," Dr. Levine said. "I do everything I can to get them back into their shoes."
Foot fashion and function have, of course, long been in conflict. Chinese girls' feet were bound to shorten them by bending the toes backward. High heels have been fashionable in the United States for decades, even though they can cause not only serious foot problems but knee, pelvic, back, shoulder and even jaw pain.
It is not just the height of shoes that can lead to damage. A 1991 study found that almost 90 percent of women routinely wear shoes that are one to two sizes too narrow. A 1993 study found that women have more than 80 percent of all foot surgeries, primarily because their shoes are too tight.
Narrow shoes can cause the big toe to bend outward, permanently changing the shape of the bone and causing a bunion, or swollen big-toe joint. Women have more than 94 percent of bunion surgeries, the 1993 study found. By scrunching up the smaller toes, fashionable shoes can also cause or worsen claw or hammer toes, a condition in which the smaller toes are permanently bent downward. Painful and unsightly corns or calluses often form on the tops of such toes.
Foot doctors disagree sharply over how to respond to such problems. Most advise patients to stop wearing the offending shoes. "It's far simpler to cut the shoe to fit the foot than to cut the foot to fit the shoe," said Dr. Pierce Scranton, a Seattle orthopedic surgeon who was an author of the 1993 study.
But an increasing number of doctors are performing delicate and expensive operations to allow women to continue to wear their favorite shoes.
Dr. Levine's Park Avenue office, called Institute Beauté, is decorated with cream and rose-colored wallpaper, pictures of Dr. Levine with celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer and Joan Lunden, and framed copies of articles in which she is quoted. Dr. Levine has medium-length blond hair, a striking resemblance to the singer Deborah Harry, and often wears fashionable high heels. A public relations firm schedules her media appearances.
Sitting with a brown Yorkie in her lap, Dr. Levine explains that she is "simply fulfilling a need, a need to wear stylish shoes." Although she would not provide specific numbers, Dr. Levine said that this year she will undertake 40 percent more cosmetic foot surgeries than she did three years ago. Among the most common are operations to shorten toes, at a cost of $2,500 per toe, and collagen injections into the balls of the feet - to restore padding lost from years of wearing high heels - about $500 per injection, she said.
Her business is taking off, Dr. Levine explained, because shoes are an increasingly indispensable fashion accessory. "These women come in and say, `Listen, I just came from my other podiatrist who told me to stop wearing high heels, and I don't want to hear that,' " she said.
Many of her patients are youthful, beautiful women who want to look their best, she said. To prove her point, she walked into an examining room where Jennifer Cho, a 27-year-old Manhattan lawyer was waiting to have the stitches on her right toes examined.
Wearing high heels caused her discomfort, Ms. Cho said, and her toes had begun to curl downward and develop corns. She saw Dr. Levine on NBC's "Today" program and decided to have the problem fixed. On Monday, Dr. Levine shortened the toes on Ms. Cho's right foot, and she is scheduled to operate on the left toes on Friday.
"This will help me wear the shoes that I want to wear," Ms. Cho said happily.
Dr. Levine and her partner, Dr. Everett Lautin, said that critics do not understand that when doctors tell their patients not to wear high heels, patients do so anyway. "People say, 'why do toe surgery if they work just fine?' " Dr. Lautin said. "Well, 'why do a nose job when your nose is working just fine?' It's the same thing. People want to look their best."
The answer, Dr. Positano said, is that "you don't walk on your face." The foot is a complex network of 26 bones, 33 joints, 107 ligaments and 19 muscles that must support more than 100,000 pounds of pressure for every mile walked. Even small changes can unexpectedly undermine the foot's structural integrity and cause crippling pain, Dr. Positano and others said.
Even collagen injections have risks. Simone Levitt's toes are numb because collagen injections into the pads of her feet damaged nerves. Ms. Levitt was persuaded to get them because she thought they would allow her to walk freely in high heels. "Like a dope, I let this happen," said Ms. Levitt, 74, who lives in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Now Ms. Levitt said that she is unable to wear anything but sneakers and that her feet hurt constantly.
These risks explain why many foot doctors advise patients to try everything — including never wearing high heels again — before risking surgery. There are no solid figures for cosmetic foot procedures, so the American Orthopaedic Foot & Ankle Society is beginning a study to measure how common the operations have become.
Critics say that one factor compelling the increase they are seeing in such procedures is a push by doctors to expand their practices in areas not covered by managed care. "People are making a lot of money off of this, because patients pay in cash," said Dr. Dreeben, the California surgeon.
Dr. Levine said that insurers pay for many of her procedures, because patients are in pain. "I'm not looking to make a killing," she said. "I make a living."
Dr. Reese finally found 2-inch heels that she could briefly wear while walking down the aisle at her daughter's wedding in July. She quickly changed into a pair of ballet slippers that she had dyed black and fitted with special supports. She expects, however, that she will never again be able to walk barefoot or wear anything but specially designed shoes.
" I really regret being worried about looking good for my daughter's wedding," Dr. Reese said, "because I'll pay for it for the rest of my life."

I can't lie. I'd do the surgery if I had the cash to throw around. What I don't understand is why can't they make shoes a little wider??? I have long feet (sz 11), and finding (stylish) heels in that fit my width is almost impossible, but if I buy wide fit shoes they are too big. I don't understand why the shoe width barely increases by the length/size of shoe!!

 

[As You Like It]

What I want to know is why the hell is it so hard to get wide-width shoes. Even in non-fashionable brands and styles. I've given up on women's shoes and pretty much strictly wear men's now, since women's shoemakers refuse to believe that those things at the ends of our legs have any sort of function.

My feet are very wide, flat, and I have a bunion, thanks to ballet and heredity. No way do I want to mess them up any further. However this means whenever I do have a dressy occasion, I have to scramble to find a pair of shoes that don't make me cry when I try to walk, then suffer through the occasion in discomfort anyway.

Words cannot express how much I hate womens' shoes.

 

[Theory]

Question for the ladies? Why walk around the city with these heels if they are so bad for you. Now, I'm not saying you have to wear tennis shoes or flips, but perhaps a pair of flats and then change into your heels once you are inside?

I will never forget walking one day on 57th and this nice young lady was dressed to the nines, but got the heel caught in one of those ventilation grates??? It wasn't a pretty sight at all. Or is the changing concept silly, because most people treat these streets as their personal runway and wearing them inside only would defeat the purpose? Just curious

 

[As You Like It]

A lot of women I know do wear walking shoes out on the street and change to dress shoes in the office, but if somebody didn't carry a large enough bag to hold extra shoes or didn't keep a spare pair at the office, I guess she'd have to go out in what she intended to wear. In my case, since I always wear comfortable shoes, what you spot me in on the street is what I will have on in the office, but I have a weird relationship with foot-fashions!

 

[dr1819]

Oh, I dunno. Everything in moderation. I've worn 3 to 4 inch heels for the last five years, and have only had problems when the shoes don't fit well, such as a pinching toebox, loose heel cup, no arch support, or shoes that won't allow me to adjust across the instep.

 

[Arug]

I lovelovelove high heels, but I've been in a footsurgery for walking the wrong way all my life. My doctor told me that my bones have grown so out of order, that I can't wear high heels.
So I actually can't wear them because of doctors orders.

Still I'm in love with them... Well, that's life. I'll never wear heels again.
Protect your feet, because you have only one pair for your whole life.

 

[ibimus]

That's a little scary...
...I say as I stare lovingly at my high heels. I know there's a danger, but I can't give them up!

I suppose it's similar to anything, whether it's getting a body piercing or going bungee jumping. There is always a risk of serious damage, but so many people keep on going anyway.

those little muscular soldiers lined up in your feet

The phrasing made me laugh....[/b]

(edited for typos.)

 

[strawberrywater]

Cutting off toes?
I can't believe anyone would do that ... Imagine you're innocently walking down the streets in your city and there's this fashionable well-dressed woman walking towards you with a stunning pair of high heeled sandals ... you look down to take a closer look at those lovelies ... and EEEEEEEEEK no toes!

I can't walk in anything higher than 2.5 inches and I usually wear loafers. I think also the shape of the heel is an issue, the foot wobbles around a lot more when I'm wearing stiletto heels (and I can't walk on them) so I stick to pretty chunky heels. I also make sure to pad both the front and the back with gel pads so I hope I can go on wearing heels without any deformations. I rather have crooked toes than none at all though.

 

[tifa]

You know what's horrible? Taking off your heels and you can't even put your feet down flat on the ground without it hurting.

But I'm all for suffering for fashion...if the occasion is right. High heels give me so much confidence. But comfort is better

 

[Bel]

This article says flip flops are not much better than heels... is that true?
It's basically walking around barefoot. They offer no protection... from what exactly? How much protection do your feet need?

They're kind of all I wear. I don't think I have foot problems.

 

[justlooking]

^^^ How much protection? Well i think for comfort and long term comfort it needs good protection- so is that all the dents/curves need to be filled in? and no stress on the arch etc?

I like heels a lot but i just don't last. A girl i know walks in heels all day and she says she can tolerate the pain . then again she did ballet for a long time. I just can't focus when my feet hurt. I don't even want to talk to anyone lol. But i'll never give up my heels so it's just for sitting for me. minimum walking.

 

[justlooking]

You know what's horrible? Taking off your heels and you can't even put your feet down flat on the ground without it hurting.

I know EXACTLY what you mean!
Went clubbing in heels- big mistake. I could barely walk back. I had to swap shoes with my friend who was wearing flats- but the pain of trying to flatten my foot!!!! I still could barely walk. Hobbled back to the car.

 

[justlooking]

Someone posted this on another forum. washingtonpost.com

Diagram of what can happen to your feet.

http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2007/05/07/GR2007050700484.jpg

 

[Dego]

Yes, living is dangerous, you can die.