Warning : Tight pants
and skinny jeans may be hazardous to health
Neurologists have long
known about the dangers of girdles. But until recently, when a fifteen-year-old
girl came to a neurologist complaining of persistent abdominal pain and
numbness in her thigh, The neurologist had no idea teens could be at risk. It turned
out she had been wearing a particular
brand of shapewear under her soccer uniform, and the snug garment had caused nerve damage in her leg, a
condition called meralgia paresthetica, as well as her abdominal pain. And
research suggests that tight clothing can cause all sorts of other health
problems, including blood clots and bladder and vaginal infections.
"When you're
wearing skinny jeans to make yourself skinny that's not the point," Dr.
Nicholas Morrissey, vascular surgeon with NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital /
Columbia University Medical Center, told to Health Pop. "Skinny jeans are
meant to accentuate the way you look, not to make yourself look another
way."
Men should be
especially concerned when trying to squeeze on tight pants. Morrissey cautioned
that one of the problems with wearing skinny jeans is that it can cause a
testicular torsion, where one testicle gets twisted on itself. If left
untreated, the torsion can cut off circulation and cause the testicle to die.
While there have been reported cases of testicular torsion from tight clothing,
none have got so severe that a man has lost one of his testicles. Normally the
condition is so painful that people seek help pretty quickly, he said.
"Clothing isn't
designed to give us a shape that we don't have, and that's where people get in
trouble," he added.
What exactly can go
wrong when wearing too-tight clothing? A common complaint is a numbness going
down one's thigh known as meralgia paresthetica. Morrissey explained that there
is a sensory nerve that comes from your pelvis that provides sensation to parts
of your thigh. People who wear skinny jeans sometimes say they feel a numbness
going down their leg because of the constriction. Their thigh then goes to
sleep, and when they stand up, it feels like their foot isn't under them.
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Tight
Pants Syndrome
Dr. John Michael Li, a
neurologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, told CBS Miami that some people suffer from "tight pants
syndrome," marked by abdominal discomfort, heartburn and belching from
wearing those skin-tight slacks. Normally the pants are three inches too small
for the person's waist.
"When you put
pressure on the abdomen, your food doesn't digest. It risks not being able to
be digested properly especially for people who have reflux esophagitis,
heartburn or chronic heartburn. Tight clothing can aggravate those
problems," he added.
"Men only need
one, but it would be a heck of a thing to lose one because of your jeans,"
Morrissey commented.
A recent survey of
2,000 British men conducted by TENA Men, which makes garments for men with
bladder problems, showed that one in 10 men have had discomfort from wearing
skinny jeans, the Telegraph reported. Half of those men said they had problems
with their groin, while over a quarter of them had bladder trouble. One in five
had a twisted testicle.
A recommendation from
the National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme prompted the
ACCC to commission tests on a range of clothing and textiles that come into
direct contact with the skin.
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Does not washing jeans pose a health risk?
To wash or not to wash?
It is a long-running debate..
The argument for not
washing your jeans has traditionally been about making your denim last longer.
Hot water and detergent can speed up how quickly your jeans fade. One manufacturer o sees it from an
environmental perspective. According to him not washing your jeans saves water
and energy. But is it a good message on
building sustainability? Is it safe?
There is no evidence
that not washing jeans is hazardous to your health, said Bernhard Redl, an
associate professor in the molecular biology department at the University of
Innsbruck in Austria. That is, when they are worn under normal conditions, such
as everyday street wear.
Bacteria, skin cells,
and sweat are transferred to our pants from our own body but "skin
microorganisms are generally not hazardous to ourselves," said Rachel
McQueen, a professor of human ecology at the University of Alberta in Canada.
McQueen's research focuses on the development and retention of odors in
textiles.
"There are
environments where having sterile clothing is important," McQueen said.
That would be true in a hospital, for example, where clothing can transfer
infections. "However," she added, "sanitizing your hands is
going to be a more important issue here than washing your jeans."
A few years ago, one of
McQueen's students wore his jeans for 15 months straight without a single wash
and then tested the level of bacteria on them. The student-teacher team was
surprised to find that the unwashed jeans carried nearly the same amount of
bacteria as those same pants after they had been washed and then worn for
another 13 days.
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Is
recycling plastic water bottles for rubbish Jeans earth-friendly and healthy?
According to one Jeans
manufacturer he uses denim that is made
from cotton and recycled plastic bottles. Essentially, every pair utilizes
eight plastic bottles. Utilizing waste
plastic bottles for producing jeans is the excuse by manufacturers that the act
ion is ecofriendly. But, in effect the product out of waste recycling will not be healthy for our
WAIST!
Do
you wish that your next pair of Jeans be
made from recycled water bottles?
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Even
a teetotaler has to wear Jeans-made-from-Beer-Bottles
Are you a teetotaler or
one who hates liquor including beer? You
may be wearing the blue jeans made out of beer bottles! A company has developed a process where they collect,
sort, clean, shred and melt plastic beer bottles. After that, they blend them with
cotton and spin them into yarn. Of course I’m simplifying the process. The
manufacturer calls it earth spun apparel!
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The
dirty secret behind Jeans and bras
Greenpeace, an
international NGO went behind the scenes to two major towns of jeans and bra
manufacturing, and discovered widespread pollution.
Just in time for the
holiday shopping season, Greenpeace has released a report examining two textile
industry towns in Guangdong province. This behind-the-scenes look at how our
clothing is produced may make you think twice before queuing up for Christmas
sales. They visited Xintang, the "Jeans Capital of the World which produces over 260 million pairs of jeans a
year, equivalent to 60% of China's total jeans production, and 40% of the jeans
sold in the US each year.and Gurao, a manufacturing town 80% of whose economy
is devoted to bras, underwear, and other clothing articles.
Blue jeans are much
dirtier than you might ever guess. That cool distressed denim wash is the
result of a several chemical-intensive washes. Fabric printing and dyeing
involves such heavy metals as cadmium, lead and mercury - not stuff that you
want to be getting near your bare skin!
Greenpeace testing
found five heavy metals (cadmium, chromium, mercury, lead, and copper) in 17
out of 21 water and sediment samples taken from throughout Xintang and Gurao.
In one samples, cadmium exceeded China's national limits by 128 times!
The villagers they met
complained about the printing and dyeing factories' wastewater discharge into
the local river, which flows into the Pearl River Delta. "Everyone says that people who work in
dyeing and washing have reproductive and fertility problems. My cousin once
worked in a dyeing plant. He died of pleurisy," said Lin Zhixin, a migrant
worker from Sichuan who works in jeans sewing.
In 2009, Gurao produced
more than 200 million bras - enough for every third woman in China to have one.
But this prosperity has come at the cost of the degradation of the local river,
the Xiao Xi.
Villagers nearby say
that the dirty, fetid river is no longer fit for drinking or laundry. Fish no
longer live in the river. People living near the river complain that they must
frequently endure the stench from the wastewater, and when the river overflows,
their yards and homes are flooded by wastewater.
"The water is
discharged from the dyeing factories upstream. Sometimes it smells really
awful. And every time the color of the water is different - I've seen every
color imaginable," said Ren Shan, a migrant worker from Guizhou.
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