ADELAIDE - An Australian woman collapsed after her skinny jeans cut off blood supply to her lower legs while she was squatting in them for hours, it was reported on Tuesday.
The 35-year-old woman from Adelaide had spent hours squatting while helping a relative move house, The Australian news website reported. Her skinny jeans felt increasingly tight and uncomfortable, but she did not think much of it and later went for a walk, the report said.
"As she was walking, she was having trouble lifting her feet and it got so bad she eventually fell and was unable to get up again," the website quoted neurologist Thomas Kimber as saying.
As no one was around in the park, the woman laid on the ground for hours before eventually crawling out to the road and hailing a taxi to take her to the hospital, according to the report.
"When she arrived, she had massive, really severe, swelling of both calves to the extent that we were unable to take her jeans off without cutting them," Prof Kimber was quoted as saying. "She couldn't move her ankles or toes properly and had lost feeling in her lower legs and feet."
Doctors at the Royal Adelaide Hospital found that she had damaged muscle and nerve fibres in her lower legs as a result of prolonged compression while squatting, made worse by her very tight jeans, the report said.
The woman, whom the doctors described as a fashion victim, had significant calf muscle injury and as a result, some proteins were released into her blood stream and she needed to be on an intravenous drip to flush the proteins through so that she would not suffer damage to her kidneys, ABC News website reported.
The woman recovered after four days in hospital and could walk unaided.
"The take home message I would like to leave people is if they are going to do a lot of squatting ... wear something looser, with more elasticity perhaps," ABC News website quoted Prof Kimber as saying.
"Certainly if you're squatting in skinny jeans for whatever reason and your legs feel uncomfortable or tingly, you should stand up and walk around to get the blood pumping again."
