HEALTH & SCIENCE

Health risks make some fashions "don'ts"

Physicians say style trends can cause infections, damage the musculoskeletal system and impact fertility.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. Aug. 5, 2002.

A patient came to see Jill Maura Rabin, MD, because of a recurrent vaginal infection. The obstetrician-gynecologist was forced to break the news: The patient might have to stop wearing thong underwear, an increasingly fashionable choice for women, if she wanted to stop the infections that were plaguing her.

Although there are no scientific studies connecting the underwear to infections, Dr. Rabin and several other gynecologists report anecdotally that they are seeing an increasing number of women with recurrent urinary tract and vaginal infection connected with the style. Dr. Rabin hopes to do a study looking at the link.

"The thong is like a little subway car," said Dr. Rabin, who is head of uro-gynecology at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York. "The bacteria goes from the rectum to the vagina and to the bladder. Normal healthy patients shouldn't really be impacted by this, but anyone who is predisposed may have an increased incidence."

It's not the first time fashion has been implicated in a health problem. Images in fashion magazines have long been linked to eating disorders. Corsets in the 19th century were blamed for fainting spells and atrophied back muscles. Tight jeans in the 1970s and early 1980s -- so tight the zipper had to be pulled up with pliers -- were blamed for genital irritation and low sperm counts in men.

Even currently, the underwear trend is not the only style choice that might trigger a doctor visit. For instance, tiny handbags have given way to big shoulder bags, sending women to their physicians with back and shoulder pain. [...]

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