Study: 83 Percent of Elderly People Choose Wrong Shoes and Suffer Lower Quality of Life
Charlie Carballo
Executive Digital Director
Wearing the wrong shoes can manifest into a catalog of adverse health woes among the elderly, a new study has found.
Researchers studied people with the median age of 75 and found that a majority of elderly people who don’t wear the proper shoes have to seek medical treatment for their feet more often and suffer a lower quality of life, according to a study conducted by the Podiatry University Clinic at the University of A Coruña in Spain.
“Because of people’s lifestyles at this age, they can use shoes that are harmful to their feet,” Daniel López López, a scientist who led the study, explained to Science Daily. “This, combined with the appearance of chronic diseases such as obesity, vascular diseases, diabetes or rheumatoid arthritis, causes a worrying increase in foot problems in elderly people of between 71 percent and 87 percent. This means having to seek medical and podiatric attention more frequently, as it affects their functional capacity and quality of life.”
Data showed that pain, foot function and social interaction were among the problems that manifested from wearing the wrong shoes. It can also result into foot disorders that can affect loss of balance and falls, López added.
It is recommended that elderly individuals wear wide footwear with adjustable straps and rubber soles, as well as have regular visits to the podiatrist, López said.
In an earlier study conducted by López, he found that 83 percent of elderly people wear the wrong type of shoes.
Researchers found that some elderly people who wear the wrong shoes do so because they have developed a tolerance for pain in their feet over the years, and some have experienced changes in the morphology of each foot that are not in tandem development, which results in the need for a different size shoe for each foot.
