Doctors are raising alarms over a growing trend among teenage girls wearing corsets to slim their waistlines. Health experts warn that prolonged use during adolescence can stunt skeletal growth, displace organs, and cause lasting damage to the lungs, liver, and kidneys.
A trend that they have picked from social media, peer pressure and promoted online as a beauty hack may be putting these teenagers at serious medical risk.
Dr Lumbasi Lutomia, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Aga Khan University Hospital, says that corsets can affect body development in teenagers due to the constant squeezing and pressure on a growing skeleton.
Using a corset continuously can stop the lower part of the ribcage from developing and expanding properly.
This may cause permanent narrowing of the chest, making it harder for the lungs to expand fully. Over time, this can lead to breathing difficulties, fainting, and a rounded or 'barrel-shaped' chest.
Squashed organs
The constant pressure on the stomach area can also push and shift major organs from their normal position, which may affect how they work. "Digestion can become a problem because the gut is squeezed, and the blood supply to it is reduced," explains Dr Lutomia.
It can also weaken the ability to control the bladder, leading to incontinence. Pressure on blood vessels in the lower body can reduce blood flow to the legs, causing tiredness, nerve problems, and tingling sensations in the legs and feet.
Dr Lumbasi says, "Continuously supporting the back muscles with a corset can cause them to weaken and shrink (a process called muscle atrophy)." This can make a person depend on the corset for posture and lead to back pain when it's removed.
The body has a way of responding to need. When you sit without a corset, your muscles work to maintain your posture. But if you keep them supported with a corset, they become inactive because they’re no longer doing the work; over time, they 'sleep' and weaken.
It is also thought that wearing a corset could contribute to other conditions, such as endometriosis. By increasing pressure in the pelvic area, it can cause swelling of the veins (pelvic venous congestion), which may lead to swollen legs (edema), varicose veins, and leg pain.
More than a waistline at stake
Wearing a corset tightly over long periods can also harm abdominal organs such as the liver, kidneys, and intestines. Increased pressure inside the abdomen (intra-abdominal pressure) can reduce blood flow (hypoperfusion).
Dr Lumbasi shares, the kidneys, which help control blood pressure, may respond to this reduced blood flow by releasing chemicals that raise blood pressure.
"This can lead to hypertension (high blood pressure) and, over time, even kidney failure."
If the corset is kept tight all the time, it can also interfere with the liver's ability to process substances (liver metabolism) and cause "back pressure" that affects the brain, leading to headaches.
It may also slow down the movement of food through the intestines (intestinal motility), reduce the stomach's capacity, and affect the pancreas, potentially causing inflammation.
Additionally, corsets can contribute to chronic fatigue or light-headedness due to restricted oxygen intake.
Dr Lumbasi explains that by reducing lung capacity, the lungs’ ability to respond to the body’s activity demands decreases, which can result in poor exercise tolerance and fatigue during physical exertion.
"In short, prolonged corset use can result in multi-organ dysfunction."
Do you prescribe corsets and if so, when? "We use them for a short duration when the back is injured or after surgery, to help protect the injury as it heals; often not more than a month or so," says Dr Lumbasi.
Secondly, corsets can also be used after delivery, when the belly is a bit distended, to help support the tummy. Third, Dr Lumbasi says there are certain medical conditions where the muscles in the abdomen are weak, which may require prescribing corsets.
"On the other hand, we use corsets in children with postural difficulties like cerebral palsy with scoliosis."
Medical vs aesthetic corsets
However, a medical corset is very different from an aesthetic one. Dr Lumbasi explains that medical corsets have metal frames on the sides and usually have straps at the back that you tighten.
"The aesthetic ones tend to be even longer, coming all the way towards the chest to accommodate breasts, and that is even worse because they increase pressure on the chest cage."
There is a basic rule about bone growth — if you distract it (pull it apart), it grows faster, and if you put pressure on it, it grows more slowly; in other words, bone responds to forces.
If these young girls start early wearing these corsets, and especially if they are tight, lacing around the chest cage, you can literally find the shape of the lower chest cage changing to accommodate the corset, and the shape of the pelvis also molding if they wear them over a long time. And now you can imagine, in a young woman, if you close the pelvis, what it means for her childbirth process later in life."
