Back from break...Dr. Oz made me throw my remote at the tv! High heels CAUSE osteoarthritis...

Happy Holidays to all who are/have just celebrated. Mine was a whirlwind of activity with both my family and my husband's family joining us here in San Francisco.  After I said good-bye to my in-laws tonight, I settled onto my couch thinking, "I could use some mindless time." Lucky me.  There was Dr. Oz to wreck it for me.  The description on the listing was enough to make me want to skewer a lot of things. It began with artificial sweeteners, but I didn't make it far enough into the show without becoming enraged to watch it. Fear sells, kids. Fake causal relationships can stoke that fear...

The segment I am skewering has the title, "Do high heels cause arthritis?"  Naturally, for full effect, the headline was projected on a screen, on the back of his set with suitably ominous font.  The answer according to a researcher at Northwestern was  actually the answer to a different question. She did a study about the effects of heel height on knee joints and her findings are not altogether that surprising. Heels higher than 2" are correlated with damage to the knees. However, there is no way to say how often one would have to wear these to completely trash their knees. Fair enough. Next we had a podiatrist talk about a woman who was x-rayed while walking in heels of different heights. The 4" heels had her "out of alignment." Again not surprising. But then she said, keeping the body out of alignment CAUSES osteoarthritis. Is it a contributing factor? Perhaps.

CAUSES osteoarthritis? Give me a break. Apparently she seems to have forgotten her science training. And then they moved on to hocking shoe insets (one of which was made of flax seed - how many futures contracts on flax does OZ own?). I kid you not.

Buy this STUFF, if you can't give up your "ADDICTION" (yes, he used that very loaded word) to high heels. Otherwise, based on the CAUSAL relationship we FAILED to show, you WILL get osteoarthritis. I am off to have a glass of wine in 4" heels, without a flax-seed-padded insert. I'll be sure to report back when I have an osteoarthritis diagnosis.