Center of pressure (COP) during the Postural Balance Control of High-Heeled Woman

Abstract

This study addressed the effect of balance control problems of the high-heeled women. Clinical relationships have been proposed linking foot ailments or pain to wearing high heels, yet little quantitative research has been done on the relationship between bare foot and high feeled foot. The purposes of this study were to objectively quantify the displacements and velocities of center-of- pressure (COP) of body during two-way waist pulling and to compare the differences between barefooted and high-heeled situations. We used a waist pulling system which has three different magnitudes to sway the subjects. We found that the kinematic information of barefooted and high-heeled women's COP is very important in understanding the mechanism of postural balance control of women in every-day life. In the high-heeled's case, the displacement of COP increases in 200% as against bare footed. Also the velocity variation of COP grows two times than the bare footed.