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Can footwear affect achilles tendon loading?
Rowson S, McNally C, Duma SM.
Clin J Sport Med. 2010 Sep;20(5):344-9.

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This is the kind of research that can be used to help clients and patients make the right choices in footwear provided it can be presented in an understandable way. Often what seems to be common sense gets disproved by research, in this case it's backing up what has until now been anecdotal.
Thanks for posting this. Bill Bird

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Put on your red shoes and dance the blues away.

Bill Bird Shoes

Bill:

Unfortunately this research is on cadavers without any influence from central nervouis system control or from the dynamics of gait. This, of course, should temper our enthusiasm for assuming that the results from this study are representative of real life, but it certaiinly is a start in the right direction.

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Sincerely,

Kevin

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Kevin A. Kirby, DPM
Adjunct Associate Professor
Department of Applied Biomechanics
California School of Podiatric Medicine at Samuel Merritt College

e-mail: kevinakirby@comcast.net

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hiya
excuse my ignorance but can someone clarify exactly what is meant by high top and low top shoes?

cheers
JB

Hi JB

I agree it is too vague even for an abstract.

The top line of a shoe is the finished edge where the foot goes in. I'm assuming that low top means the top line runs under i.e. distal to, the malleolli and high top means above i.e. proximal to the malleolli.
With the development of the cushion collar such as found on trainers, we now have footwear that has a soft top line that can end level with the prominence of the malleolli. In my experience, there are a lot of benefits to a cushion collar but in the context of this article I would assume that it's a low top unless the top line actually finishes proximal to the malleolli.

That's my professional opinion but may not be what the researchers had in mind.
Bill Bird

__________________
Put on your red shoes and dance the blues away.

Bill Bird Shoes

Hi,

I understand that this study was sone on cadavars, has there been any research that is done on "living" humans? If there is, does anyone hav a link?

My understanding is that there is no benefit to high top shoes except for in the case of ankle injuries, but even then an ankle brace is more beneficial. Am I wrong to assume this?