Is there a health risk associated with wearing high heels

asks M Scott.

A. It depends how often you wear them. In the 1940s and 1950s, women wore them all the time and ended up with bunions and hammer toes. These days, they're not worn so often.

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Q. When were they first worn
A. Restoration dandies wore them to complement their dress style, and in industrialised cities they were a sensible way of protecting you feet in the streets in the days before sanitation.

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Q. Aren't high heels difficult to walk in
A. Yes. And if you run in them, you're just asking for trouble. Many famous people have famously toppled over theirs.

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Q. Who
A. Actress Anna Friel, for one - she was running down the street when her three-inch stiletto got stuck in the pavement, resulting in a nasty strain. Spice Girl Emma Bunton had to use a wheelchair after she tripped over her four-inch platform boots while running in Japan. Jason Donovan injured himself twice with his stilettos while appearing in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Then there's Naomi Campbell, who fell off her platforms on a catwalk...

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Q. So why does anyone wear them
A. Philip Joyce, a podiatrist from Oxford ran a survey and found that one in five women wears high heels to charm the man in her life. And, in her book The Language of Clothes, Alison Lurie says that an extended leg is a sign of sexual availability in many animal groups, so making your leg appear longer by wearing a pair of cripplingly high heels would send the same message to humans.

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Q. Why are they in fashion again
A. Probably as a reaction to years of trainers. And it's a big reaction. The new heel is at least four-inches high.

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Q. Isn't there a danger of falling off
A. According to the British Standards Institution, more than 200,000 people in the UK have been treated for 'shoe-related injuries'. It even issued warnings of an 'epidemic of killer shoes' after a 25-year-old Japanese woman suffered a fatal skull fracture after toppling from her five-inch-high shoes.

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Q. Any chance of swapping them for something more sensible
A. Unlikely. High heels are seen as a sign of status, sex appeal and power. More than 80% of the women questioned by Philip Joyce said they would not swap fashionable footwear for healthier feet. As a result,� Joyce estimated that, by the time they were 60, three-quarters of them would suffer from corns, bunions, and clawed or overlapping toes.

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By Sheena Miller