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Stories for Reprint
It's Not You, It's Your Shoes
By Ferdous Al-Faruque, MARRTC Staff
Wearing bad shoes might hurt more than just your feet; it might hurt your knees. For people whose shoes are hurting their knees there may be hope. A group of researchers at Rush University in Chicago has designed a shoe that mimics walking barefoot and reduces stress on the knees in people with knee osteoarthritis.
In a previous study, the researchers found that people who walked barefoot were able to reduce the force to their knees when walking by 12 percent compared to walking in their regular shoes. Naija Shakoor, a researcher and rheumatologist at Rush University, says from the study they thought that maybe walking barefoot allows the foot to flex naturally, which may reduce the force to their knees. To test this theory, the researchers developed what they call a mobility shoe that mimics being barefoot.
"It's a flat flexible shoe that we thought would be the closest to being barefoot without actually being barefoot," says Shakoor.
The researchers recruited 15 women and 4 men between the ages of 47 and 69 with knee osteoarthritis to test the new shoe. They asked each person to walk barefoot, wear a commonly prescribed walking shoe and then wear the mobility shoe. After observing how the volunteers walked in each situation, the researchers found that the mobility shoe improved walking and reduced force on the knees more than the prescribed shoe. The study concluded that modern footwear may actually contribute to osteoarthritis by putting excess stress on the knee joints.
Shakoor says the mobility shoes is extremely flat to bring the foot closer in contact to the ground and is especially designed to flex with the foot's natural walking pattern. "It has cuts in the soles strategically placed where your foot naturally flexes when you walk, so the shoe would bend in those places when you're walking just like a barefoot would bend," she says.
The mobility shoe has been patented, but probably won't be available any time soon. However, other shoes that are similar to the mobility shoe can be found in stores now. "I guess if you were looking for a shoe on the market (similar to the mobility shoe) it would be any flat, flexible shoe and there are a lot of those on the market," says Shakoor.
But before you go out shopping for flat flexible shoes, Shakoor says that everybody's feet are different so their shoes have to be different. People should seek professional advice about what shoes are best for them such as talking to a podiatrist.
Shakoor says they are about to start a study to look at the long-term effects of wearing the mobility shoe by having people with knee osteoarthritis wear them for six months. They hope if the study shows significant improvement in people's walking, the mobility shoe may be prescribed to people with knee osteoarthritis sometime in the future.
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