By MAGGIE SNAVELY

If you looked around at people’s wrists, you would probably notice that most of them are wearing some kind of hair tie or rubber band. When you have a lot of hair, carrying around a hair tie is critical for those hot days or when you’re trying to work, so the most convenient and easy access place to keep it is right there on your wrist. Sure, we all know that it cuts off your circulation and leaves behind a red indent sunken into our wrist, but we guiltily keep it on anyway. But do you really know why it’s bad that your circulation is being cut off? Believe it or not that’s not the only reason you should keep the tight bands off your wrist.

When you cut off the blood flow to your hand it actually makes your heart pump harder because it’s trying to get blood all the way to the tip of your fingers. When you wear a tie on your wrist it puts pressure on your veins, so it’s harder for the blood to get through. Even though it’s just a little accessory on your wrist, it’s making your heart work harder all the time you are wearing it.

According to the website “Life Health and Well Being” your hair tie can pick up a lot of different germs during its journey through the day.  Amy Mulvaney gives examples of this, saying “you might have dropped it on the floor, held it in your mouth while your doing a ponytail, thrown it in your sweaty gym bag, that’s a lot of bacteria being picked up.” After picking up all that bacteria, it can enter through your skin after the hair tie chronically rubbing on your wrist. With the hair tie constantly rubbing your wrist, causing tiny cuts all over your skin to form, bacteria can enter your body through the skin. Bacteria living in your skin can penetrate to deeper layers where they do not belong.

A young girl named Audree Kopp was sent to the emergency room after a giant painful lump developed on her wrist from wearing her hair tie. “She was told by the doctors that her hair accessory had caused the infection as bacteria from the band had made its way into her pores and hair follicles,” Anna Pollitt wrote. Audree Kopp said, “Thank god I caught it in time, I could have got sepsis. Once it gets into your bloodstream, people have been known to go into a coma, your body shuts down, it could have been way worse.”

Whatever the reason, wearing a rubber band on your wrist has no positive effects as shown in the case of Audree Kopp. When you want to put your hair back maybe you can find another way to keep your hair ties handy without risking your health.