Adults only just realising why your feet get bigger as you get older

Our feet usually stop growing during puberty - for girls, this is around age 15 and for boys, it's around age 16. But this doesn't explain why our shoes seem to jump up one or two sizes when we reach our 50s, making it almost impossible to slip on those old-favourites from your 20s collecting dust in the back of the wardrobe.

But according to Harvard Health, there's a scientific reason why adult shoe sizes change throughout our life, even when we've 'stopped growing'. It prompted one confused Reddit user to ask: "Those age 60 and up, did your shoe size change? I just bought a nice pair of shoes in a half size larger than my usual. The salesman said that the feet can get bigger as you age. Anyone else notice this issue?"

'Entitled mum orders I wake her son up before school run - I taught her a lesson'

'I caught my mum sleeping with my husband - I can't erase the image from my mind'

A Harvard Health explanation reads: "By the time you reach your 50th birthday, you've probably also reached another milestone: you've put 75,000 miles on your feet. You may reach this milestone much earlier if you've led a foot-active lifestyle. By age 50, you may have lost nearly half of the fatty padding on the soles of your feet.

"And you may be wearing a shoe that's a size bigger than what you wore in your 20s, in part because of weight gain that puts greater pressure on your feet, and in part because your ligaments and tendons have lost some of their elasticity (which also predisposes them to potentially painful ruptures or microtears)."

But that's not all because if you have given birth, you have another reason to increase your shoe size - as hormones released during pregnancy also cause ligaments to relax. Menopause can also impact your feet as the loss of estrogen and other hormonal changes generally lead to lower bone density. This results in osteoporosis if enough bone mass is lost.

The Harvard Health explanation adds: "This condition can raise the risk of stress fractures (hairline breaks) in any of the bones of the foot. Unless treated appropriately, stress fractures can worsen and cause the bones to shift out of place." Sharing their own experiences, one Reddit user said: "I'm only 53 and I've gone from wearing a 10.5 in high school to wearing 12s."

Another user added: "My shoe size went up half a size during my first pregnancy and gradually increased another half size in my 30s. It hasn’t changed in the 40 years since." A third user said: "I have a high arch and it gradually got flatter to the point where my foot size went from 8 1/2 to 9."

Do you have a story to share? Email paige.freshwater@reachplc.com.