Development of Suitable Pantyhose for High Heels

Women often wear high heels to make their feet look slender and beautiful. However, wearing high heels puts more strain on the lower legs than walking barefoot. Our goal is to develop pantyhose that reduce leg muscle fatigue when wearing high heels. Wearing high heels usually puts extra strain on our legs. We created comfortable pantyhose; participants walked in them and obtained myoelectric potentials like those obtained when walking barefoot. To understand the reason for this, we investigated the 2D images at the sagittal plane of changes in pelvic tilt, as well as changes in the position of the head and shoulders, when wearing shoes or pantyhose. We focused on the angle between the line from the anterior inferior iliac spine to the iliac crest and the floor, which angle increased; rotated forward (decreased; rotated backward), the upper body axis bending forward (backward). With normal pantyhose, the higher the heel, the further the pelvis rotated backwards against the floor, leaning backwards and keeping the head and shoulders apart to maintain balance. Wearing high heels tilts the upper body backwards. Our specially designed pantyhose with added parts increased clothing pressure, which rotates the pelvis forward. This counteracts the rotation of the pelvis and keeps the position of the heavy head and shoulders closer to the center axis of the body. When wearing our pantyhose, the effect of head and shoulder alignment that occurs when wearing high heels is eliminated. This is thought to be the reason why the use of the muscles in the legs and abdomen was similar when the naked feet and when wearing our pantyhose with high heels. In this way, normal pantyhose is sufficient for low heels, but our pantyhose, which has partial compression processing on the panty area, can be said to be suitable for high heels.