Your feet could be hazardous to someone’s health. Not because of athlete’s foot fungus or the stench that lingers after your slip off your loafers, either.

Most people fear fists being flung at their faces, but a new study shows that your feet are actually your body’s most dangerous weapons in a fight.

Although people tend to punch more than they kick during fights, your feet actually cause more severe injuries. Feet actually tend to cause more harm to your body than knives or blunt objects.

English researchers discovered this while studying twenty-five-thousand people treated for injuries they received from violence, mostly to the head and neck. The study did not include people who had received gunshot wounds or who had died because of their injuries.

The findings show that after feet, using a blunt object such as a baseball bat as a weapon spawned the next highest number of serious injuries. Other body parts, namely fists, also made the list of dangerous weapons , as did sharp objects.

Researchers say the severe injuries caused by kicking could partly be because of the shoes worn by the kicker. Boots, especially steel-toed types, are typically more dangerous than bare feet.

Kicking may also be more of a problem in group fights. One-fourth of the people researchers studied were attacked by three or more people.

The moral of the story? Don’t overlook the dangers of someone’s feet if you’re attacked. It could be a deadly mistake.