Wearing jeans that are too tight can have an adverse effect on your health. Doctors are pointing fingers at skinny jeans as the culprits that are causing such symptoms as numbness and tingling in the legs. Take the sad case of 28 year old Parmeeta Ghoman of San Francisco.
But when she wore a pair of super-tight skinny jeans to dinner with friends in December, she noticed an odd tingly sensation running up and down her thighs. And when she got up to walk around, things got weirder. She felt like she was almost "floating," because she couldn't feel her legs. "It felt really strange — it felt like my leg had gone to sleep," Ghoman says.
Ghoman's skin-tight denim may have caused a temporary bout of a nerve condition called meralgia paresthetica, also known as "tingling thigh syndrome." The condition can happen when constant pressure — in Ghoman's case, from the skin-tight denim — cuts off the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve, causing a numb, tingling or burning sensation along the thigh.
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But over the last several years, experts say they’ve been seeing more young women at a healthy weight complain of symptoms. The culprit: too-tight jeans.
"The nerve, in some people, is susceptible to compression," says Dr. John England, a New Orleans neurologist and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. The femoral cutaneous nerve, he explains, runs from the outside of the pelvis and through the thigh. "It is a pure sensory nerve -- it doesn't go to muscles or provide strength. Anything that is tight around there could potentially compress the nerve that goes there.
Doctors say that if you wear really high heels with those skinny jeans the nerve is even more affected, because wearing high heels causes the pelvis to tilt forward, putting even more pressure on the nerve. The cure? Take off the jeans, put on a pair of sweatpants and elevate your legs.
