Skinny jeans health warning after woman collapses with numb legs
Wearing skinny jeans could be a health hazard, experts have warned, with squatting while wearing the tight-fitting trousers linked to muscle and nerve fibre damage in the legs.
In what has been described as the most serious incident on record, doctors have submitted an article describing the case of a 35-year-old woman who collapsed and spent four days in hospital after wearing the jeans for several hours.
She had been helping a relative move house, according to the article, and had spent a number of hours squatting or kneeling as she emptied cupboards.
The case study, published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, said she described the jeans as getting increasingly tight and uncomfortable throughout the day.
Then, later that evening, she had numbness in her feet which caused her to trip and fall.
Unable to get up, she spent several hours lying on the ground - and when she was eventually found, her calves were so swollen that her jeans had to be cut off her.
She could not move her ankles or toes properly and had lost all feeling in her lower legs and feet.
Medical experts found that the prolongued period of squatting had compressed her muscles and nerve fibres.
Her fashion choice for the day - skinny jeans - had made it worse by aiding the onset of compartment syndrome, which consists of reduced blood supply to the legs causing swelling and the compression of adjacent nerves.
It was only after four days of treatment and being on an intravenous drip that she was able to walk again independently.
One of the authors of the article, Associate Professor Thomas Edmund Kimber from the University of Adelaide in Australia, said previous side-effects of skinny jeans had been limited to ulcers and wounds on the thigh.