The dangers of squeezing into skinny jeans
In a recent Today show segment, Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb modeled a new brand of skinny jeans designed with a special stretchy fabric to make women look thinner. People reports that Oprah and Rachael Ray also seem to be fans of these jeans, And last week I was reading a waiting-room magazine and came across a two-page ad by Nivea, the skin products company, asking me to join the My Silhouette! My Skinny Jeans Challenge. It promised that a comprehensive four-week program would help me firm, tone, and redefine my silhouette and get "skinny jeans confident."
The customized food and workout plan may indeed help you become healthy, but the skinny jeans may make you sick. Before you get dressed you may want to consider what neurologists have known for decades, and has recently attracted a flurry of media attention: Snug-fitting pants like skinny jeans can cause nerve damage. The condition, called meralgia paresthetica (MP), is caused by pressure on a nerve in the pelvis that causes a painful, burning, tingling thigh.
MP is only one of a host of medical problems that can be set off if you squeeze into skin-tight slacks. Constrictive clothing has been implicated as a cause of bladder infections, vaginal yeast infections, contact dermatitis, and even blood clots in the legs. It can also interfere with motility in the bowels, causing abdominal pain after a meal. In men, it has been suggested to cause genital heat stress and possible fertility problems.
Ironically for those who wear skinny jeans to improve their figure, trauma from too-tight pants can lead to a rare but disfiguring condition called lipoatrophia semicircularis in which mechanical pressure on the thighs can create skin depressions due to atrophy of the subcutaneous tissue. The first report of a case from wearing jeans was in a 19-year-old girl. A year later her 23-year-old sister developed the identical condition because she had started wearing the same discarded pair of jeans!
Here’s one example where we can blame our jeans entirely. Take my advice and ignore this fashion trend.
—Orly Avitzur, M.D., Consumer Reports’ medical adviser
Posted by: Tasha Vancil!!!!! | Oct 12, 2009 10:35:47 AM
wat ever they are amazing i dont want to here this
Posted by: Brittney | Aug 10, 2009 2:29:26 PM
This is good information. My OB-GYN specialist told me to avoid tight-fitting clothes and dye-free detergent and I feel much better and have fewer infections.
Posted by: Ken (MD) | Jul 17, 2009 7:46:12 PM
Nanalynne: "Amazing. I am counting the years (decades) I have squeezed into jeans and never contracted any or these afflictions. It is just more YadaYada!"
There are enough reported cases in which tight fitting jeans can reasonably be implicated as a causative factor for these conditions that the above advice should probably be taken seriously.
Jeans are a risk factor. Whether one wishes to take any risk is entirely a personal decision. It is, however, misleading to others to dismiss such risks on the basis of one's own experience with them.
Posted by: Pam | Jul 17, 2009 1:29:49 PM
Useful information for someone who is experiencing one of those symptoms and is not aware that their skinny jeans could be a factor.
I could not resist looking up lipatrophia semicircularis. A few articles discuss how that symptom might also be caused by electromagnetic fields around the desks of people who sit in front of computers all day at work. I would like to see a Health Blog entry about that.
Posted by: Nanalynne | Jul 16, 2009 7:44:06 PM
Amazing. I am counting the years (decades) I have squeezed into jeans and never contracted any or these aflictions. It is just more YadaYada!
Posted by: Stephanie | Jul 16, 2009 1:42:31 PM
Yikes. I'm wearing skinny jeans right now and let me tell you something: this will never happen to me. Why? Because my jeans FIT. The idea behind the skinny jean style is actually that they STYLE is "skinny". They could NEVER make you skinny. Put on spandex if you want your clothes to fit tightly. Not that you'll look good... Women need to get real and learn to wear clothes that compliment their bodies. One show that reiterates this point every Friday night is "What Not to Wear". Despite what you may think or have heard about the show, every person that works with them realizes that they must choose and can find clothes that fit them correctly and that will compliment their bodies. If your pants actually fit and you buy a good brand, you won't have to worry about these "dangers".