Shoe lover: A woman taking part in the 'Glamour Stiletto Run', a 100-metre sprint wearing high-heeled shoes, is pictured in Berlin on 18 August 2007. Though the heel of these shoes is seven centimetres, a new study shows that shoes of two to five centimetres are optimal for improving the contractibility of pelvic floor musculature.

Credit: AFP

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SYDNEY: Despite being decried for their damaging effects, a study has found that high-heeled shoes might be doing womens' pelvic floor muscles a favour – and potentially improve their sex lives along the way.

"As a paladin of all women who love heeled shoes, I tried to find something healthy in them, and at the end I reached my goal," said urologist Maria Angela Cerruto from the University of Verona, Italy, in a letter to the journal European Urology.

Previous research has linked high-heels to everything from foot pain and tendon problems to gait abnormalities and schizophrenia.

But Cerruto has put the footwear in a more positive light by studying the effects of ankle inclination on the pelvic floor musculature. She found evidence that by wearing a slightly heeled shoe women were able to optimally position their pelvis to improve the strength and contractibility of its muscles.

The pleasure muscles

Healthy pelvic floor muscles in the female body are not only important in providing support to nearby organs, including the bladder and bowel, but they are also key to optimising sexual performance and satisfaction and are colloquially referred to as 'the pleasure muscles'.

But the tone and contractile power of these muscles diminishes over time, due to natural ageing, pregnancy and childbirth; facilitating a need for pelvic floor maintaining exercises that are often difficult for women to perform, Cerruto told the BBC news service.

Her new study, also detailed in European Urology, has however shown that with an ankle inclination of around 15° – which can be achieved by wearing a slight heel of two to five centimetres, depending on a person's height – women might be able to achieve similar goals to those of pelvic muscle exercises.

Study participants, with their ankles inclined as though in heels, were found to position their pelvises in a way that enhanced the contractile power of their muscles. In theory this would also lead to an enhanced sense of sexual satisfaction, said the BBC.

Furthermore, "wearing heeled shoes [might affect] pelvic floor muscle activity, reducing myofascial pelvic pain, relaxing the pelvic floor and improving pelvic organ well-being," she said.