Why anyone would wear high heeled shoes is a mystery to me. The pain and discomfort seem too high a price to pay for the stylish payoff. But whether they are medically dangerous is hard to answer. Do high heeled shoes increase the risk of bunions? The answer is an unequivocal maybe.

The advent of the shoe millennia ago has been a mixed blessing for the human foot. Obviously necessary for surviving the winter, uneven Montreal sidewalks and for walking long distances, improper footwear can compress the toes and distort the foot’s normal anatomy. This pressure can push the big toe out of alignment, resulting in a bony protrusion on the side of the foot that we call bunions (or hallux valgus in medical circles).

With X-rays you can actually measure the angle of deviation of the big toe and a

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