Spanx Make You Look Fantastic But Could Be Hurting Your Health
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@parantoux
We love form-fitting, super-sculpting shapewear as much as the next woman, but wow can it bring on a boatload of health troubles. If you’re only shimmying into Spanx (and similar brands) for a hot dinner date or for a fancy gala you attend every year, you’ll be just fine. But if you wear them as a part of your daily professional wardrobe, it might be time to reconsider all of that compression that lasts at least eight hours per day.
Let’s start from the top and work our way down, shall we?
If you wear any shapewear that covers your torso, you’re compressing your internal organs too much and for too long. This pressure impacts how much the diaphragm can inflate, which makes you much more likely to take a lot of shallow breaths rather than breathe at a normal rate and depth. It can also lead to unwanted acid reflux and associated disorders as you push unnecessarily on your entire digestive system for hours and hours at a time. It’s clearly not doing your actual digestion and bowels any favors, either.
Continuing to the pelvic area, you’re more likely to suffer from painful urinary tract infections, uncomfortable yeast infections and other forms of skin irritation when you wear these types of compression clothing for several reasons. First, they’re a pain in the ass to wrestle your way into initially, so a lot of women do their best to hold off on bathroom breaks as long as they can to avoid that struggle all over again. And second, they don’t breathe very well, so the longer you remain in them (especially if you’re particularly sweaty) the more you risk developing an infection. Hello, bacteria.
When you get to the leg region, you can face several problems. Some women experience an intense pain or tingling in their thighs when there is too much pressure on the nerves in the groin area, which is known medically as meralgia paresthetica. Pressure undoubtedly hinders proper circulation as well, which puts many women at risk of developing blood clots and varicose veins.
And if anyone is looking to shapewear for additional muscular support like strong posture, they’re actually just allowing the real muscles that they do have to degrade even further. An over-reliance on things like Spanx can leave them in a worse position than they started, which is obviously not ideal.
It’s surprising that a single piece of clothing can impact the internal body so significantly, but here we are. So if you insist on continuing to wear things like Spanx frequently, just promise us that you’ll at least go to the bathroom when your body tells you it’s time. And don’t be afraid of the reality that if you eat well and exercise, you probably have no real need for these painful items at all.
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