Are high heels bad for your health?
When one Brooklyn woman approached her doctor with excruciating leg pain and overall numbness, the physician's first questions were quite shocking. "Do you wear tight clothes? Control-top pantyhose? Tight belts?" he asked. When she nodded yes, the doc knew he had found his culprit.
Dr. Irving Friedman told the Wall Street Journal that constricting fashions, such as cinch belts and skinny jeans, can compress a major nerve (the femoral cutaneous) that runs laterally from the abdomen through the thigh. The result of continuous constriction can cause a chronic neurological disorder called Meralgia paraesthetic, and severe numbness and pain in your thighs.
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We first brought you the news that high heels may be doing you harm, but now we're adding skinny jeans to the list of sartorial health hazards.
"Anything that puts pressure on that nerve can cause it," Dr. Friedman said of the nervous disorder, which is common among police officers who carry heavy guns on their hips and ballet dancers who work in tight tutus.
Connecticuit's Dr. Octavio Bessa has coined the phrase "tight pants syndrome" for the nervous and digestive problems he sees caused by matchstick pants. WSJ reports that Dr. Besso "was seeing 20 to 25 patients a year, usually middle-aged or older men, suffering from abdominal discomfort, distention, heartburn and belching a few hours after eating." Someone tell Justin Theroux to invest in a pair of wide-leg trousers asap.
Skinny jeans have also been accused of causing yeast infections, back pain, and ugly thigh lesions.
Will you be ditching skinny jeans and spanx, or is pain really the price of beauty?
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