You might want to take off that hair tie

Having a hair tie around your wrist: it’s standard practice for a lot of women. Everyone who has hair that’s long enough to be tied back wants to have a hair tie close by to tie their hair back as soon as it gets in the way. And what better place to keep such a tie than around your wrist? Unfortunately, American Audree Kopp found out the downsides of wearing a hair tie like that…

The elastic band is a source of bacteria.

Circulation

Maybe you remember your mother or father saying to you that you should take off that hair tie because it would cut off your circulation. Sure, at the end of the day (or worse; the night) we did have a red mark on our wrist. This mark always wore off pretty quickly, though, and these days there are hair ties in all shapes and sizes, so it doesn’t really bother us anymore. But after reading this, we’ll think twice about it…

Infection

Audree Kopp was moving house when she discovered a red bump on her wrist. At first, she figured it was an insect bite, but the bump only got bigger and redder. She went to the doctor, who gave her antibiotics. This didn’t help, though, and the bump kept growing and growing. In the end, she went to the emergency room where she was told she needed to be operated on immediately: Aubree had an infection on her wrist in the form of an abscess.

Doctor

The doctor who treated Aubree had to cut open the skin to drain the abscess. He told her she shouldn’t have come in much later because if the infection had gotten into her bloodstream, she could have gone into shock and eventually coma. The doctor suspected that the bump was caused by a dirty hair tie. The bacteria from the hair tie had gotten into the pores or perhaps a little wound on her wrist, which in turn caused the infection. That’s why the doctor discourages people from wearing hair ties around their wrists. Aubree definitely learned her lesson, that’s for sure…

Take a look at the video below in which Aubree tells her story. Warning: the images can be experienced as shocking.

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