Never Wear a Hair Tie Around Your Wrist

Here's Why You Should Never Wear a Hair Tie Around Your Wrist

Oh delightful, here's another beauty-related horror story to make you rethink your life: Turns out the hair ties you unthinkingly keep on your wrist could literally endanger your life. Fun!

WGAL reports that a woman who put a hair tie around her wrist—you know, like you do every day of your life—got a life-threatening infection because of it. Audree Kopp was in the midst of moving to a new home when she noticed a bump growing on her wrist. She originally assumed it was a spider bite, but it wouldn't subside.

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"It just kept getting bigger, and redder, and worse," she says.

She went to her doctor and was immediately put on a round of antibiotics, but the bump continued to grow. She went back and she was put into surgery to remove what had become a large abscess on the back of her wrist. 

Her doctor, Dr. Amit Gupta of Louisville, Kentucky's Norton Healthcare, believes the infection was caused by bacteria from Audree's hair tie getting under her skin—but through pores and hair follicles. So not, like, an open wound on her wrist that her hair tie then infected. But just normal skin. And a normal hair tie. Creeped out yet?

Thankfully, Audree's case was caught in time. ​"It could have been a whole different ball game," she says. "Once it gets into your bloodstream, people have been known to go into a coma, your body shuts down. It could have been worse."

​CBS Local says doctors advise that hair ties should be worn loosely around wrists, if at all, and removed and cleaned often.