We have come across an interesting study confirming what many of us already thought - that your feet get wider as you age.
The in-depth study was conducted in the Netherlands, and examined how a woman's foot shape changed with age. They looked at a wide range of metrics: foot lengths, ball widths, ball circumferences, low instep circumferences, high instep circumferences, and heel instep circumference.
They took detailed foot measurements of 160 women between 20 and 8,. and corrected their findings so a lady's body mass didn't affect the results.
They found the width of ladies' feet increased by 3.1-4mm per decade. This doesn't sound a lot, but over 20 years, that is nearly 1cm. So, is it surprising that the shoes you wore in your 20s would crush your toes at 40!
Another interesting finding was that the circumference around the ball of the foot increased by 5.6-7.4mm per decade! This reflects what we find with customers visiting our wide-fitting shoe shop: as you age, you need wider footwear and a deeper toe box area to ensure your feet have enough room to feel comfortable.
This pattern continues until ladies are 70-75, and then the foot starts to thin and lose mass after that but never returning to the foot shape of 20-40 years of age.
They also found that foot pain was present in 20–30% of older adults, and the primary reason for this was footwear that was too small and narrow in relation to their foot size when younger.
So please make sure you wear correctly fitted shoes. Encourage friends and family to do the same so their feet are healthy and pain-free when they get older.
You can read the full report by clicking on the link below.
Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378512216302146
