New Ways Your Skinny Jeans Are Trying To Murder You

Sometimes these posts just about write themselves, folks.

But before we lead you to the punch-line, let’s talk about compartment syndrome. Compartment syndrome is a thing many of us hadn’t even heard of until last year when journalist Miles O’Brien suffered a freak instance of acute compartment syndrome. The short of it – Miles’ arm was whacked by a piece of luggage, resulting in acute swelling and pressure, followed by blockage of blood flow in the “compartment” of his forearm, leading to amputation.

Not gonna lie, learning about compartment syndrome kind of freaked us out a bit and we may or may not hyperventilate now anytime we even slightly bang an arm into a door frame or stub a toe (which in our case is rather quite often).

Science, in the form of a case study published this week in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry,¹ has now made a noteworthy addition to the list of potential causes of compartment syndrome: skinny jeans. There’s been chatter in the medical community in recent years that overly-skinny skinny jeans are generally a bad life choice medically-speaking, but such reports have centered on (you know, just) nerve damage.²

Skinny-jeans – not just for ladies! Compartment syndrome – not just for lady bits!

This new case study describes a 35 year-old woman who, under the influence of skinny-jeans, spent the day (including “many hours of squatting while emptying cupboards”)³ helping someone move. On her subsequent walk home, our intrepid skinny-jeans clad heroine experienced “bilateral foot drop and foot numbness,” resulting in her falling and not being found for hours.

By the time the woman received medical attention – her skinny jeans had to be cut off. Tests showed impaired nerve and muscle function in her calves and feet, as well as muscle edema and swelling in the calf compartment consistent with early stages of compartment syndrome. Prognosis: the skinny jeans were doing their level best to choke the life from this woman’s legs. There is a happy ending to this story (spoilers!): after 4 days of treatment (and no further encumbrance by skinny-jeans), the woman recovered enough to walk on her own and was discharged.⁴

Moral of the story: too-skinny skinny jeans continue to be a poor life choice all-around. And if this can happen to ladies in skinny jeans, just think of the implications for dudes in too-skinny skinny jeans. We don’t know if penises can experience compartment syndrome (and we certainly aren’t going to subject our tender sensibilities to googling THAT), but let’s play it safe kids and how about just don’t overdo the “skinny” in skinny jeans, especially if you’re doing manual labor.