Your Underwear Can Affect Your Health

The right fit of your underwear can surely affect your day but did you know that the type of underwear you wear can affect your health?

Tighty-whities just turned 80 years old! My second ex-husband liked to wear his tighty-whities all around the house just like the dad does on ABC show "The Goldbergs." So not cool. I'm just not a tighty-whitie fan but, for some, it is the underwear of choice.

Here are ways your underwear can affect your health (mainly for the guys):

1.  Fertility.  You've probably heard that tighty-whities can affect a guy's sperm count.  And studies HAVE actually backed that up. It has to do with temperature. Ideally, things should be two or three degrees cooler than his body temperature. But tight underwear prevents that because it keeps everything closer to the body.

2.  Silk underwear can give you jock itch. Most of the time, jock itch is caused by a combination of eczema, a slight fungal infection, and sweat.  And silk isn't very absorbent, so people with jock itch are usually told to wear cotton underwear.

3.  Spanx can give you nerve pain. They've been linked to something called "meralgia paresthetica."  Basically, they irritate the nerves in your abdomen and thighs, and cause tingling, numbness, or burning. It usually goes away if you stop wearing them though.

4.  Black underwear can give you a rash.  A compound called PPD is used as black dye in a lot of CHEAP underwear. And a lot of people are allergic to it.

(Daily Mail / EverydayHealth / WebMD)