ANY heel lift is unnatural for the foot—ANY.  Heel lifts are for fashion and status—not function.  Heels make people taller.  Height is typically viewed as a status symbol.  Historically, wealthy people wanted to literally “look down upon” the poor that were outlawed from wearing elevated shoes—it’s that simple. Interestingly, at some points in history, shoes with heel lifts were literally banned for peasants thus relegating them to an inferior height position so the wealthy “could look down their noses” at them.

Any and all heel lifts will immediately alter vertical column integrity and fall line unless you start compensating.  The less heel lift you have in your shoes, the safer and more efficiently you can walk and run.  Heel lifts also reduce the effectiveness of the Achilles Tendon for propulsion.  The Achilles is designed to stretch out and snap the heel back up to assist in forward locomotion, but when it is chronically shortened by heel lifts, the Achilles cannot fully do its job which creates compensations in glutes, front thighs, and other muscles of the body.  Bottom Line?  It’s not as efficient to have a heel lift.  Our foot does not need a heel lift—if it did, the heel lift would be built into our foot at birth!

For a fun experiment, take your shoes completely off. Stand on flat level ground. Carefully raise heels off the ground about 1/2″ by ONLY bending at the balls of your feet (metatarsal joints). DO NOT change anything else in your hips, spine, upper body, etc.–only bend at the balls of your feet. Get ready to pitch forward and catch yourself before you fall! You will quickly see how delicate our balance is as humans as we are the ONLY mammals that stand completely upright on such a narrow base of support with only two feet. Many other animals have four feet plus a much lower center of gravity. For humans, our vertical column integrity is critical. *See my future posts on “Column Integrity” and “Falling Line” for more information.