Biomechanical analysis on walking in shoes with high-arched heel

With the increase in social participation of women, high-heeled shoes have become the most preferred shoes by working women as they offer a nice foot shape. However, high-heeled shoes affect pain and serious deformities such as hallux valgus and cavus foot when they are worn for a long time. Especially, wearing high heels can cause problems in the musculoskeletal system, body unbalance, and postural abnormality, leading to negative effects on movement over time. In recent years, people have begun to exercise more due to increased interest in healthcare. Accordingly, many studies related to various functional shoes have been reported. Most functional shoes value convenience and functionality while high-heeled shoes give more importance to the design of the shoes. Thus, most recent studies on high-heeled shoes evaluated the effects of heel height during walking by analyzing the distribution of foot pressure, and kinematic changes in the lower extremity. However, these studies could not discover the reason why high-heeled shoes cause musculoskeletal and postural abnormality. In this paper, we developed shoes with a high-arched heel having the same height and appearance as high-heeled shoes and analyzed their various biomechanical characteristics. Ten healthy women in their twenties wore a 3-axis wireless ambulatory measurement sensor developed in our laboratory on the pelvis and ankle and walked on a treadmill (Gait Trainer, BIODEX, USA), and during which the biomechanical motion of their lower extremities and muscle activity were measured. EMG (electromyography) activity was measured by attaching surface electrodes to the rectus femoris, biceps femoris, tibialis anterior, and gastrocnemius medial head, and magnitude of muscle contraction was analyzed in IEMG (Integrated EMG) value. Kinematic changes in the lower extremities were measured using an inertial sensor attached to the ASIS (anterior superior iliac spine) of pelvis and heel. Foot pressure was divided into three regions, forefoot, midfoot, and rearfoot, and was measured using the Pedar-X system (Novel GmbH., Munich, Germany) during walking; maximum force, contact area, peak pressure, and mean pressure were analyzed for each region. The results show that muscle activity in the four muscles and ankle inversion, dorsiflexion/plantarflexion angle, decreased while the pelvic anterior/posterior tilt increased in shoes with a high-arched heel. This paper suggests that shoes with a high-arched heel affected the activity of the lower limbs during walking and positively influenced postural abnormalities by reducing higher pressure and preventing excessive ankle ROM (range of motion).