Flip-Flops, Flat Shoes Relieve Arthritic Knees

Clogs, Stability Shoes Put More Stress on Knees Than Flat, Flexible Shoes and Flip-Flops, Study Finds

If you have knee pain from arthritis, wearing flat, flexible shoes may reduce the stress on your joints and keep you more comfortable, according to new research.

In a comparison study that evaluated the force or "load" on arthritic knees while wearing clogs, athletic shoes with stability features, flat walking shoes, flip-flops, and going barefoot, the flat and flexible shoes won out, says study lead author Najia Shakoor, MD, an associate professor of internal medicine at Rush Medical College and an attending physician at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

Her study is published online in Arthritis Care & Research.

''We know barefoot is good for your knee load from previous studies," Shakoor tells WebMD. ''Then we thought, do different shoes have different effects on the knee?" So they compared the four shoe types with going barefoot.

The surprise? "The shoes that we intuitively recommend to our patients [with knee arthritis] and thought might be best -- stability shoes and clogs -- were associated with the highest load."