EFN

The study was the work of lead author Alyssa B. Dufour from the Institute for Aging Research of Hebrew SeniorLife in Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues, and is published in the October issue of the journal Arthritis Care & Research.

The research team determined that one-quarter of participants reported generalized foot pain on most days, with 19 percent of men and 29 percent of women falling into this category.

Women who wore “good” shoes were 67 percent less likely to develop hindfoot pain — in other words, pain in the heel area of the foot — than those who wore “average” shoes, they found.

The study found that intelligent shoe selections was a good sacrifice for looking good, in the long-run: women who had primarily worn supportive footwear like sneakers or athletic shoes in their younger years cut their risk of common foot pain later in life by more than half, compared with women who had worn shoes that gave average support, like hard-soled or rubber-soled ones.

The research discovered no association between foot pain in men and the shoes they wore, mostly because they do not normally wear high heels and spend less time in sandals, the researchers concluded.