LONDON // Attention wearers of skinny jeans: don’t squat – at least not for long.
Doctors in Australia report that a 35-year-old woman was hospitalised for four days after experiencing muscle damage, swelling and nerve blockages in her legs after squatting for several hours while wearing tight-fitting denims.
“We were surprised that this patient had such severe damage to her nerves and muscles,” said Dr Thomas Kimber of the Royal Adelaide Hospital in Australia.
The patient, who was not identified, spent most of the previous day helping someone move, squatting for long periods while emptying cupboards.
Clad in skinny jeans, the woman said they felt increasingly tight and her feet were numb as she walked home, making her trip and fall.
She spent several hours stranded outside before getting to the hospital as she was unable to get up.
Dr Kimber and colleagues published a report about the case online on Monday in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.
Dr Kimber said tight jeans have previously been reported to cause nerve lesions in the groin but not the kind of nerve problems in the lower leg and severe muscle damage they saw.
He said squatting compressed the nerves in the lower leg, reducing the blood supply to the calf muscles and that the skinny jeans worsened the problem.
After being treated for four days – and having her jeans cut off – the woman still had some weakness in her legs but walked out of the hospital and later recovered fully.
Dr Kimber does not know if the woman still wears skinny jeans but warned her against the dangers of squatting in them.
“I think it’s the non-stretchy nature of jeans that might be the problem,” Dr Kimber said, noting that tight pants with more elasticity would not be as dangerous since they would not squeeze nerves and muscles.
He does not wear skinny jeans himself, but not because of the medical risks: “I’m too old to get away with them!”
* Associated Press
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Children who witnessed blood bath want to help others
Aged just 11, Khulood Al Najjar’s daughter, Nora, bravely attempted to fight off Philip Spence. Her finger was injured when she put her hand in between the claw hammer and her mother’s head.
As a vital witness, she was forced to relive the ordeal by police who needed to identify the attacker and ensure he was found guilty.
Now aged 16, Nora has decided she wants to dedicate her career to helping other victims of crime.
“It was very horrible for her. She saw her mum, dying, just next to her eyes. But now she just wants to go forward,” said Khulood, speaking about how her eldest daughter was dealing with the trauma of the incident five years ago. “She is saying, 'mama, I want to be a lawyer, I want to help people achieve justice'.”
Khulood’s youngest daughter, Fatima, was seven at the time of the attack and attempted to help paramedics responding to the incident.
“Now she wants to be a maxillofacial doctor,” Khulood said. “She said to me ‘it is because a maxillofacial doctor returned your face, mama’. Now she wants to help people see themselves in the mirror again.”
Khulood’s son, Saeed, was nine in 2014 and slept through the attack. While he did not witness the trauma, this made it more difficult for him to understand what had happened. He has ambitions to become an engineer.
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One in four Americans don't plan to retire
Nearly a quarter of Americans say they never plan to retire, according to a poll that suggests a disconnection between individuals' retirement plans and the realities of ageing in the workforce.
Experts say illness, injury, layoffs and caregiving responsibilities often force older workers to leave their jobs sooner than they'd like.
According to the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research, 23 per cent of workers, including nearly two in 10 of those over 50, don't expect to stop working. Roughly another quarter of Americans say they will continue working beyond their 65th birthday.
According to government data, about one in five people 65 and older was working or actively looking for a job in June. The study surveyed 1,423 adults in February this year.
For many, money has a lot to do with the decision to keep working.
"The average retirement age that we see in the data has gone up a little bit, but it hasn't gone up that much," says Anqi Chen, assistant director of savings research at the Centre for Retirement Research at Boston College. "So people have to live in retirement much longer, and they may not have enough assets to support themselves in retirement."
When asked how financially comfortable they feel about retirement, 14 per cent of Americans under the age of 50 and 29 per cent over 50 say they feel extremely or very prepared, according to the poll. About another four in 10 older adults say they do feel somewhat prepared, while just about one-third feel unprepared.
"One of the things about thinking about never retiring is that you didn't save a whole lot of money," says Ronni Bennett, 78, who was pushed out of her job as a New York City-based website editor at 63.
She searched for work in the immediate aftermath of her layoff, a process she describes as akin to "banging my head against a wall." Finding Manhattan too expensive without a steady stream of income, she eventually moved to Portland, Maine. A few years later, she moved again, to Lake Oswego, Oregon. "Sometimes I fantasise that if I win the lottery, I'd go back to New York," says Ms Bennett.
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