Stand up for shoes that give your feet a hand

Tag : rain shoe

It was near the end of "Sex and the City," after the starlets hadworn high heels in the snow, at the pool, to the beach, in the rain(is this sounding like Dr. Seuss?) and, of course, to bed. It wasafter the one who got pregnant went jogging and we were NOT allowedto see what she was wearing on her feet, and after the only visibleshoes I remember spotting OTHER than high heels had made theirappearance (flats worn by an office intern and sneakers worn by twoguys throwing rose petals during a photo shoot).
That's when I started wondering: What are their feet going to looklike in another 10 years, after being crammed down a drainpipe?Because those women look as if they've been stuck in heels sincebefore they could walk, their little bronzed baby spikes forgottenin some horrible box of memories.
It made me wish Jack Valenti were still alive, so we could start acampaign against debilitating footwear in Hollywood and make it astaboo as smoking.
Probably it was not planned that way, but "SATC" coincided withwhat became the Year of Evil Shoes at the American College ofSports Medicine's recent annual meeting, at which two featuredresearch studies discussed how different types offootwear-flip-flops and high heels-might adversely influencefitness.
There is a long trail of evidence on the problems caused by highheels, including bunions, deformities such as hammertoe, ashortening of the Achilles tendon and stress fractures. There areseveral other problems listed on the Mayo Clinic's Web site.
To that list, the ACSM conference added a new worry when LouisianaTech University researchers noted that as people in high heels walkdown stairs, the dynamics of their gait shift markedly from howthey would descend barefoot or in low-heeled shoes. Force istransferred away from the heel (which normally carries the weightof the stride but in this case has little to balance on) and towardthe toe.
How does that affect the rest of the foot and lower body? Would youwant to be in an airplane that was landing nose first?
Flip-flops also came under scrutiny, with new research showing thatthey, too, alter the way people walk. People shorten and slow theirstride and scrunch their toes in a way that increases the angle ofthe ankle as the foot goes through its gait.
Auburn University researcher and doctoral student Justin Shroyersaid the departure point for his study was the sense that peoplewearing flip-flops for extended periods-to work, forexample-experience lower leg pain. His research does not show whatmight cause that, but it does suggest that tooling around a city onhalf an inch of molded plastic might not be the best idea.
"The way we think about it is that anything that deviates fromnormal and you do it for a prolonged period of time, it may causeproblems," Shroyer said.
After all, fitness is not just about the gym. We worry about theergonomics of office seating and computer keyboards for a goodreason: Small stresses can compound into major problems.
Why not pay the same attention to what's on our feet?
Since the invention in the late 1950s of what came to be known asthe Earth Shoe, a number of footwear designs have come alongclaiming to mimic the state of nature-walking barefoot.
The Earth Shoe did it with a "negative heel" that gave wearers aslightly backward tilt and, according to the company's claims, madethem burn more calories and engage more muscle in standing andwalking.
More recently, shoes such as those from Masai Barefoot Technologyand Chung Shi have made similar claims for footwear the companiessay mimics the natural health of African tribesmen or the "naturalmassage" Chinese peasants enjoy by walking barefoot on bamboo mats.Both use rounded soles that create a slight imbalance and force adifferent sort of stride that-again, according to thecompanies-tones muscles, eases pressure on joints and improvesbalance.
Studies of the MBT have shown that the shoes do increase muscleactivation, and some therapists will prescribe them for patientswho need to rehabilitate muscles or joints stiffened or weakened bydisease or injury.
A colleague in my aikido class swears by her Chung Shis (which Ibelieve were recommended to help with a problem that began withflip-flops ... hmmm).
"It definitely helps the feet if there are certain weaknesses,"Stephen Paulseth, a physical therapist in Los Angeles and head ofthe American Physical Therapy Association's foot and ankle group,said of the MBTs and similar shoes.
The MBTs definitely change the way you walk. I have been using atrial pair for the past two weeks, and they are bouncy and fun towobble around on. I am not sure how much difference they wouldmake, day to day, to anyone in reasonable shape. My sense is thatyou'd adapt to them pretty quickly.
MBT marketing executive Monica Riehl said the company is working onmore-aggressive uses for the shoe: exercises and applications forathletes and others that would add that same bit of rocking andinstability to running or other workouts. And, she noted, there areplenty of people in sedentary jobs for whom a bit of extra muscleactivation (and a bit less stress on the joints) would bebeneficial.
For me, I am thinking high heels on the treadmill.
Now that might make a difference.