Ready for the next fashion victim

Tight pants, killer heels can unleash more pain than appreciation

If you think the long, strange history of suffering for fashion ended with the breathtaking corsets of Victorian times, look no further than an Australian woman treated in hospital for the damage done by skinny jeans.

Doctors at the Royal Adelaide Hospital reported this week that a 35-year-old woman was hospitalized for four days after experiencing muscle damage, swelling and nerve blockages in her legs. She had been helping a friend move and spent several hours earlier in the day squatting to clear out low cupboards.

“We were surprised that this patient had such severe damage to her nerves and muscles,” Dr. Thomas Kimber wrote in an email to The Associated Press.

The patient, who was not identified, said her skinny jeans felt increasingly tight and her feet were numb as she walked home, making her trip and fall. Unable to get up, she spent several hours stranded outside before getting to the hospital. Kimber and colleagues published a report about the case online Monday in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

Kimber said tight jeans have been reported to cause nerve lesions in the groin, but not the kind of nerve problems in the lower leg and severe muscle damage they saw. He said squatting compressed the nerves in the lower leg, reducing the blood supply to the calf muscles, and that the skinny jeans worsened the problem.

After being treated for four days — and having her jeans cut off — the woman still had some weakness in her legs but walked out of the hospital and later recovered fully. Kimber doesn’t know if the woman still wears skinny jeans, but warned her against the dangers of squatting in them.

“I think it’s the non-stretchy nature of jeans that might be the problem,” Kimber said, noting that tight pants with more elasticity wouldn’t be as dangerous since they wouldn’t squeeze nerves and muscles. Other fashions that are bad for your health:

High heels and

flip-flops

The extremes of towering high heels or dead flat sandals both cause problems, but for different reasons. Elevating heels more than a couple of inches pushes body weight forward, causing women to lean back to compensate, putting stress on the lower spine. “If you’re over 30, you’ve probably figured out high heels already. Being tilted up like

that causes back pain,” says Dr. Jay Robinson, president of the B.C. Chiropractic Association. As for flip-flops, Robinson says, they force wearers to adopt a shuffling gait that can create foot pain such as plantar fasciitis. “They cause you to walk differently. They are horrible for teenagers and kids who wear them constantly.” Using the beachwear day in and day out can overwork calves. “People come in thinking they have foot problems, but they have calf problems,” he says. Beverley Kosuljandic of the Jericho Sports & Orthopaedic Physiotherapy Clinic says she wants her clients to toss their flip-flops in the garbage. “It’s a bugbear of mine,” she says, “because poorly supported feet cause back problems. Heck, if you wear them for long enough, you get jaw problems because your whole body has had to compensate. It’s working far too hard.”

Heavy purses

That giant bag carrying a phone, tablet, bottle of water and maybe even a change of shoes might be handy, but it’s also pulling the spine out of alignment if carried on one shoulder. “You’re either going to start leaning to one side or you’re going to be firing muscles too aggressively to hold yourself upright,” Robinson says. “They’ll end up with cramping in their back and inflammation around the spine … which over time can become very hard in tissues.” Bags carried on longer straps across the body distribute the weight more evenly and cause fewer problems, Robinson says.

Wallet or phone in the back pocket

The wallet or smartphone in men’s back pockets can add slight elevation of one side of the pelvis when someone is seated (although phones are more likely to break so might not stay in the back pocket for long). Over time, that can move the spine out of line and can create back and neck pain. “Wallets are a big deal, especially for guys. You get someone with a fat wallet and when they sit down, they’re always leaning to the side and they have to correct,” Robinson says. “Let’s say he’s leaning to the right, then to make things straight, he has to tip his head to the left. Then he comes in with neck pain. This is very common.” So much so that chiropractors will immediately look for the extra wear on the back pockets of patients’ trousers to see where they

carry the offending wallet.

Spanx

An updated version of the girdle, Spanx and other body shapers are more likely to be annoying before they’ll be dangerous, says Dr. Rose Martel, a physician at Fortius Sport and Health in Burnaby. “If they’re too uncomfortable, they’re too tight,” she says. For those who choose to suffer through, it’s possible to pinch a nerve near the front of the pelvic bone that would cause tingling in the thigh. More to the point is that wearing a piece of clothing to hold in your stomach will make those muscles lazier. “I think the detriment of these Spanx is that it becomes a crutch,” she says. “They use it to suck up their gut, but the reality is … they need to develop core strength on their own.” And if you’re going to wear them, make sure they at least fit, Kosuljandic says. “If you’ve got the kind of curves where they’re going to ride up, or they start to pull, that’s not a good idea,” she says. “As soon as it starts to roll, you’ve got 10 times the level of compression on that spot and you’ve got a strong chance of occluding an artery.”