14 DAY TRIAL // Don’t be a fashion victim! This is the message coming from a group of experts writing in the peer-reviewed medical Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, after they treated a woman from Adelaide hospitalized for nerve damage from skinny jeans.
Skinny jeans or pants might look good on you and they might make you feel like the most fashionable diva on a 4-block area, but opt for something less constrictive if you have to do a lot of squatting or kneeling.
35-year-old woman is hospitalized for leg swelling, nerve damage
The woman wore skinny jeans to help a relative move out of the house. That in itself might not mean much, but she ended up spending several hours in a squatting position.
She later told the medical staff on her case that she had to empty many cupboards and place items in boxes, so she squatted to get the job done, which led to her jeans cutting off circulation in her legs.
She didn’t think anything was wrong, even though she experienced some pain. She left for her own house at the end of the day, but the pain became so bad on the road that she found she was unable to walk. She collapsed on the side of the road, where she remained for hours, as it had gotten dark and no one saw her.
Eventually, the woman managed to crawl the distance needed to hail a cab and took herself to the hospital. She was admitted with severe swelling in the legs and nerve damage, and doctors were forced to cut the jeans off her because they couldn’t pull them off.
No skinny jeans for squatting
Doctors were surprised to hear her story, but they immediately put 2 and 2 together and concluded that her wearing skinny jeans and squatting for such an extended time was what put her in that situation.
She eventually made a full recovery, but the authors say that her case should serve as an example to anyone thinking skinny jeans are suitable for all occasions.
“We were certainly surprised and shocked. It was a surprise to us that someone could get such severe nerve and muscle damage from the activity she described. The clothing she was wearing was the critical factor,” Dr. Kimber, an associate professor at the University of Adelaide, writes.
So if you know you’ll have to spend time squatting or on your knees, it’s best if you opt for less constrictive clothing.