After years of household tips on how to prevent blisters from high heels, scientists have now found a solution. You won’t believe how simple it is.
They say sometimes the simplest things in life are the ones that mean the most. Well, according to the Stanford University Medical Center there is a very simple and effective solution to prevent blisters from forming when you wear high heels.
The answer? Simply place tape on the places where the shoe rubs against the skin on your foot. But not any tape. You need surgical tape.
While it sounds like something only available in hospitals, it is actually widely sold in pharmacies. “People have been doing studies on blister prevention for 30 or 40 years and never found anything easy that works. I wanted to look at this critically”, says doctor Grant Lipman, a professor in emergency medicine to The Sun.
The study, which was published in the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine, asked 128 runners to take part in the 155-mile, six-stage RacingThePlanet ultramarathon event. The tape was applied to participants’ blister-prone areas or if they had no blister history, to randomly selected locations on the foot.
The tape was applied in a smooth, single layer before the race and at subsequent stages of the race. It was put on just one foot with the other foot acting as a control. For 98 of the 128 runners, no blisters formed where the tape had been applied while 81 of the 128 got blisters in untaped areas.
“It’s kind of a ridiculously cheap, easy method of blister prevention. You can get it anywhere. The best way to make it to the finish line is by taking care of your feet.”
Paper surgical tape not only works, but comes with lots of advantages. “It’s not too adhesive, so it won’t rip the underlying blister’s roof off,” Lipman says to TIME. “One roll of this over-the-counter ubiquitous cheap little tape can last for years.”
So there you are, give it a shot. It may work for you and you may say goodbye to blisters from shoes forever!
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