Ever since the beginning of fashion, women have had to compromise comfort for beauty when it came to their feet. Women’s shoes and modern fashion aren’t always on the same page. Although fashion is fictional world made up by people, it is pervasive in almost every part of the modern woman’s world.
Xray of Foot in High Heeled Shoe
When I first started practicing, I gave recommendations based only on the academic world I was trained from. But as time went on, I realized that although I was recommending that women change the shoes they wear to more responsible and Podiatrically correct types, women weren’t listening. This was because in the real world, a woman is under pressures that the average male doesn’t experience. Wearing a high heeled shoe is the “standard” attire for a professional woman, even if it’s a little one. The high heeled shoe has become part of the day to day culture of being a woman, almost every woman I have met owns at least one pair of high heeled shoes.
So I realized that if I really wanted to help my patients, I would think outside the box and create solutions and treatments that prevented damage to women’s feet in the battlefield of fashion. The Foot-Tuck Fat Pad Augmentation™ is one those solutions.
When a woman wears a high heeled shoe, the anatomy is changed and the pressure is put on the heads of the metatarsals rather than the base where it is designed to be (shown in the picture above). This creates a slew of problems that I treat regularly. Bunions and hammertoes are some of the more well known ones. But most women will share the story of how “their heels killed them” after that night out, or how “I danced all night, but my feet paid for it the next day cause of my heels”. This common problem is usually treated by most foot specialists by recommending better shoes. Those same women, keep wearing their heels.
Where will shoe design go next?
The first treatments I started to offer used collagen injections or DermaFiller injections to the ball of the foot that would augment the fat pad found underneath the foot in the region often referred to as the “ball of the foot”. The metatarsal bones rest on this fat pad in the normal standing position. But when the foot is put into a high heeled shoe the position of the metatarsal heads and the fat pad changes. The fat pad is shifted backwards and metatarsal heads are then placed in a downward slope with the heads taking more weight-bearing than normal. This creates discomfort after a short time since their is less effective padding in this region now that the fat pad has been shifted backward.
The use of injectable collagen or DermaFillers provided women with a conservative, safe alternative to surgery for getting relief from this uncomfortable condition. Depending on the product that was, the results could last up to one year. Injectable collagens and DermaFillers have been used for many years in plastic surgery and have proven their safety.
The procedure was received so well that even the media wanted a piece of it. Watch this clip from the Tyra Banks Show: http://www.beverlyhillsfootsurgery.com/tyra-banks-show/.
Professional women are forced to wear heels
DermaFillers weren’t good enough though. They were temporary, costly, and sometimes caused allergic reactions. That’s why in late 2007, I developed The Foot-Tuck Fat Pad Augmentation™. Collaborating with renowned plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills, the Fat Transfer to the ball of the foot is a reality. This procedure differs significantly from the collagen augmentation of the foot because there is a high potential for the fat transplants to be permanent. The collagen injections are temporary and with the use of the different products can be prolonged to as long as 18 months, but fat transfer provides the patient with a potentially permanent solution to difficulty wearing shoes with heels. Like all of my procedures, there is no down time and no pain. The procedure is performed with only local anesthesia, and only takes an hour.
It seems incredible that we live in a society that we do procedures to wear certain shoes, but until we can change the societal pressures of the high heeled shoe being the standard professional shoe gear for a woman, simple, safe solutions like the Foot-Tuck can relieve the pain that women have to deal with.
