Skinny Jeans Can Cause Nerve And Muscle Damage: Study

Skinny jeans may look great but they may not be all that good for your health, according to a new study, which found that they can damage nerves and muscles.

The study, published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, noted the case of a 35-year-old woman in Australia who was hospitalized for days because she could not feel her legs. The woman, who was not identified, told doctors that her feet became numb, leading her to trip and fall, where she lay for several hours before being found and taken to hospital.

"We believe it was the combination of squatting and tight jeans that caused the problem," Dr. Thomas Kimber of the Royal Adelaide Hospital and Department of Medicine in Adelaide, South Australia, who treated the woman, told Live Science.

The researchers wrote in the study that the jeans had to be cut because the woman’s calves were swollen. "Normally muscles can expand to compensate for swelling, but there was a tourniquet effect, so the muscles had to expand inwards and compressed blood vessels and nerves," Kimber said, according to CNN. The jeans also constrained movement in her ankles and toes, the authors wrote.

The woman was put on an intravenous drip and was discharged after four days when she could walk without help, the Australian reported.

“It is well recognized that squatting for long periods of time, regardless of what you are wearing, can occasionally cause compression of the perineal nerve which is at the knee,” Kimber reportedly said. “But this is the first case we are aware of where there has been such severe calf muscle swelling and such involvement of the two main nerves, the perineal and the tibial,” he said.