Skinny Jeans Bad For Your Health? Could Lead to Nerve Damage?

Despite helping people appear slimmer, skinny jeans are said to damage the wearer’s nerves.

A report, titled “Fashion victim: rhabdomyolysis and bilateral peroneal and tibial neuropathies as a result of squatting in ‘skinny jeans,’” published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, described how a 35-year-old woman in Australia spent four days in a hospital due to damaged nerve and muscle fibers in her legs after wearing tight trousers.

Professor Thomas Kimber, a consultant neurologist at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, described the woman’s ordeal in a report by ABC News.

The woman was helping a friend move into a house and was squatting as she emptied cupboards when she initially observed her skinny jeans becoming tighter and more uncomfortable. The woman walked home afterwards and noticed that her feet were already numb and she eventually had difficulty walking. At the park, she tripped then fell but was unable to get up. She spent several hours on the ground before she was brought to the hospital. She had to crawl to the side of the road, hail a cab and go to the Royal Adelaide Hospital on her own. When she arrived at the hospital, her calves were very swollen so her tight trousers had to be cut out from her legs. She could not move her toes and ankles well and also experienced numbness in her feet and lower legs.

The Guardian reported that the CT scan revealed how the woman’s calves were swollen with fluid and showed signs of dying muscle tissue or myonecrosis. She ultimately suffered from damaged muscle and nerve fibers in her lower legs due to prolonged compression while squatting. According to the authors of the report, wearing skinny jeans aggravated her injuries. Doctors also previously found that wearing skinny jeans can also lead to lesions to the thigh nerves. The reporters described the recent case as a new neurological complication of wearing tight jeans. People were also advised of the possible ill effects of wearing tight jeans and how they may experience the same problem in the future.

The authors stated, “The wearing of ‘skinny’ jeans had likely potentiated the tibial neuropathies by causing a compartment syndrome as the lower legs swelled.” The prolonged squatting stopped the blood supply to her calf muscles, resulting to compression of two of the main nerves in her lower leg and causing leg weakness. Her knees and hips were still functional during the whole process.