It must, I sometimes think, be exhausting, if you actually take health advice from newspapers; diligently eating eggs one week but not the next, avoiding mobile phones in case they irradiate your gonads, avoiding all foreign-looking people in case they’ve got that Ebola. I thought this particularly the case this week when I read the Daily Mail saying that wearing heels into your 70s can ‘save you from deadly accidents’.
The hypothesis is a fairly straightforward use-it-or-lose-it thing: if you wear heels, you’re developing good balance, because heels require you to stand on a far smaller surface area than normal shoes; when you stop using them, your balance deteriorates, rendering you more likely to fall over. (The first line is ‘When should a woman stop wearing high heels?’ – but hey, if high heels really protect against falls, then surely the Mail should be encouraging the guys to strap on a pair of size 11 stilettos as well.)
It’s not based on any research, as far as I can see, simply the hunch of a couple of doctors; and while it is almost trivially true that exercising your balance will improve your balance, there’s an obvious trade-off in that while you’re wearing heels it is harder to stand up.
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