Effects of High heeled shoe on the kinematics of Walking

Abstract

Many people like to Wear high heeled shoe because it gives them a cosmetic appearance and it makes them more confidence. However, most of them are not aware of the side effects of wearing high heeled shoe, this may be resultant in gait deviations, foot deformity, low back pain and may restricts the whole movement of lower extremity’s joints.    

 Lots of works have been conducted in order to determine the side effects of wearing high heeled shoe, but most of them suffered from limitations, such as studying only one side of the human body or studying only the lower extremities or studying a narrow range of heel heights.

In this research the gait parameters of girls wearing high heeled shoe were inspected. This was conducted in the biomechanical laboratory at Damascus university. Six TV – Cameras were used to register the three dimensional coordinates of certain landmarks fixed on the whole body of the participant,  and two Kistler force plates were used to measure the ground reaction forces (GRF) between the foot and the ground. Cameras and force plates ran together continuously at a sampling frequency of 200 Hz. Fourteen girls Participated in  this work, they were approximately of the same age, length and weight. Kinematics data were collected and analyzed for the whole body. The movements of ankle, knee, hip and trunk  were calculated for each participant in six different heel height cases: they are bare feet, 3, 5, 7, 9, 12 cm.

The results showed that the high heeled shoe is restricting the movement range ( the angle)  of the ankle joint, and increasing the knee flexion angle during stance phase in sagittal plane. Its also affecting the trunk flexion\extension  angle during the gait cycle. Its found that all deformities and deviations in the body  kinematics increased when the heel height increased.

Keywords: Gait analysis, Gait deviation, kinematic of gait parameters, high heel.