Determining The Negative Effects of High heeled shoe on the Moments of Lower Limb Joints

Abstract

Abstract: 

Lots of investigations proved that wearing High heeled shoe is preferable for many women, however, most women are not aware of the negative effects of wearing high heeled shoe. Many researchers have studied the effects of high heeled shoe on the gait parameters, but only a few of them studied the moments which are acting on the lower joints of women wearing high heeled shoes.  These moments are very important in gait analysis because they reflect all changes in loads, motion and muscles activities during walking.

In this work the biomechanical laboratory at Damascus university was used in order to measure the ground reaction forces between the foot and ground, and to register the three dimensional motion for the whole body of the participant, this was at sampling frequency of 200 Hz.  Fourteen girls Participated in  this work, they were approximately of the same age, length and weight. The moments of lower joints were measured for each participant in six different heel height cases: they are bare feet, 3, 5, 7, 9, 12 cm.

The results showed that wearing high heeled shoe decreased the dorsiflexion moment at the ankle joint and increased the flexing moments at the knee joint. These changes are affected by the location of the body center of gravity, and these changes increased when the heel height increased.

Keywords: Gait analysis, joint moment, Gait deviation, kinetics of gait parameters, high heel.