Everyday Activity Shoes: a Quantification of Impact Forces While Walking

This study addresses a common question in popular media: what attributes of traditional everyday activity shoes (Nike, New Balance, etc.) make a shoe better or worse. There have been several peer-reviewed studies aimed to answer this by calculating forces and torques at the ankles, knees, and hips while subjects wore shoes with different properties. Such characteristics include heel size, cushioning and side-to-side cradling of the foot. Interestingly, most studies have shown that the lack of a heel, less cushioning, and less cradling of the foot actually improve the biomechanics related to forces and torques, thus decreasing wear and tear on the cartilage and bones of the leg. Wear and tear on cartilage and bone may predispose patients to a bone condition called "osteoarthritis", which is a disease where bones become damaged from rubbing on each other with breakdown of a cartilage "cushion". This study thus aims to directly compare traditional everyday activity shoes (ASICS, Nike) with a shoe created to be flatter, less cushioned, and with less cradling of the foot (OESH shoe).