Bruce Y. Lee* says neckties have been shown to harbour microorganisms and present a choking hazard, but now a new study suggests they can also inhibit blood flow to your brain.
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Neckties are stupid.
Could they also make you stupid?
The former statement is my personal opinion, as I rarely wear neckties, but what about the latter?
A study published in the journal Neuroradiology used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to demonstrate what happened to cerebral blood flow when men wore neckties.
If you are wearing a necktie and don’t understand what cerebral flow blood is, it is the amount of blood that is flowing through your brain at a given time.
Blood is important because it brings oxygen and nutrients to your brain and removes waste materials so that you can think and stuff.
A team from the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein in Germany recruited 30 otherwise healthy young men (average age 24.6) and randomly divided them into two groups.
Half (which means 15 of them if you are wearing a necktie) wore a necktie while undergoing an MRI, while the other half (which served as the control group) did not.
Those who wore a necktie wore it with a Windsor knot, for those of you who know what that means.
The necktie group underwent 3 MRI scans: one with them wearing the necktie loosely around their necks with an open collar, a second with the collar buttoned and the neck tie tied to point of slight discomfort, and a third with the tie and collar loosened again.
The control group also underwent 3 MRI scans, in each case with no necktie.
Among the necktiers, the MRI scans revealed that cerebral blood flow dropped by an average of 7.5 per cent after the neckties were tightened and continued to remain decreased by an average of 5.7 per cent after the necktie was loosed.
All but two of the necktie-wearing subjects had a drop in cerebral blood flow, with five having a greater than 10 per cent decrease.
The control group did not experience such as decrease but instead, on average, cerebral blood flow actually increased slightly during the second MRI.
Maybe they were excited about not having to wear a necktie.
Granted, this study has its limitations.
Thirty men aren’t a whole lot of men.
The study didn’t seem to measure their neck dimensions to any great detail.
Could this effect be bigger in men with larger necks?
There are variations in how tightly you can wear your necktie.
It isn’t clear what the subjects’ regular necktie wearing habits may have been and how long these changes in blood flow may persist.
Perhaps blood flow over time could adapt to the constriction caused by the necktie.
Moreover, the research team did not measure the potential effects of a 7.5 per cent drop in cerebral blood flow.
Will such a drop really affect your thinking ability or other brain functions?
Could it put you at higher risk for a stroke or other problems?
Unclear.
As the researchers explained, typically you won’t feel a drop in cerebral blood flow of less than 10 per cent.
However, decreasing your cerebral blood flow for no real good reason can’t be a good thing, especially if you have other underlying health problems.
More studies are needed to untie the health mysteries of neckties.
Nonetheless, reducing blood flow to your brain isn’t the only potential health risk of neckties.
Here are some others:
- They may increase the pressure inside your eyeballs: A study in the British Journal of Ophthalmology revealed how a tight necktie may increase intra-ocular pressure, the pressure of the fluid inside your eyeballs. True, this was also a small study involving only 40 patients and the long-term consequences are still not clear.
- They are mass transit for microorganisms: What a lovely combination — something that can drag on top of everything in front of you, that can catch the food, spit, and boogers that fall from your face, and that you rarely wash. Studies have also demonstrated how much disease-causing bacteria and other pathogens can be in doctors’ ties.
- They can choke you: What could possibly go wrong when something with a long handle is wrapped around your neck? People have actually been strangled to death when their neckties have been caught in machines.
Of course, wearing a clip-on tie can help prevent such problems, but doing so brings other risks — like ridicule.
Neckties have very little functional value.
For those in the medical profession who claim it increases patient respect for you, take a look at a study published in the Journal of Emergency Medicine.
A survey of 316 patients found that whether a doctor in the emergency room wore a necktie did not significantly alter patients’ impressions of their doctors or the care received.
In fact, close to 30 per cent of patients thought their doctor had worn a necktie when the doctor had not.
Wearing a necktie can even bring social risk if you want to be a geek.
With tech personalities like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg eschewing neckties, going tie-less has become the new norm in much of Silicon Valley.
So why exactly do some professions, workplaces, and other setting still require or push neckties?
Oh, what men have to do for fashion, wearing something just to look oh so pretty.
What a vain and superficial world this is.
Fortunately, if you are not a man, you don’t have to deal with wearing something burdensome with no functional value just for the sake of looking good for other people, right?
* Bruce Y. Lee is Associate Professor at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of International Health and writes for Forbes and The Huffington Post. He tweets at @bruce_y_lee.
This article first appeared at www.forbes.com.
