Claire Conger

Dear Oprah,

Yesterday my mom and I watched you splash your pomegranate martini as you tottered down your runway opening your show. My mom thought maybe you shouldn’t be drinking. I thought your problem might be your footwear.

I’m sorry, but I don’t understand your fascination with high heeled shoes.

The wearing of heels displayes a lack of self-esteem and of intelligence.

I don’t wear heels and it’s not just because I don’t want to scream “I’m an idiot.” I want my knees along with the rest of my anatomy to stay healthy for a very long time.

The following is from the Harvard Health E-Newsletter December 15, 2007.

Read it and ditch those shoes!

Shoes and knee osteoarthritis

Two-thirds of people with knee osteoarthritis are women, and high heels are one of the causes, according to Dr. D. Casey Kerrigan at the University of Virginia, who studies the impact of shoes on women’s health. In an interview published in the October 2006 Journal of Women’s Health, Kerrigan said her studies have shown that high heels place abnormal stress on both the front and back of the knee. Even a modest one-and-one-half-inch heel increases pressure, or torque, in two common sites for osteoarthritic damage: the joint beneath the undersurface of the kneecap (the patellofemoral compartment) and the joint surfaces on the inner side of the knee (the medial compartment). So what’s a woman to wear? Kerrigan suggests a fairly flat shoe with little arch support that allows the foot to strike the ground and move forward as naturally as possible.