Naturists have known it for years. But now those of us who chose not to join in as they frolicked across the drizzly beaches of Britain are being forced to find out the hard way that clothes can be bad for your health. Recent medical findings blame clothing for afflictions ranging from poor posture and heartburn to cystitis and even cancer.
It may not quite be time, admittedly, to join the naturists: it's overly tight clothes, rather than clothes per se, that emerge as the real culprits. Even that may not seem particularly relevant in an age when drainpipe jeans seem almost as distant a memory as the 19th century strictures of the corset, once de rigueur for men as well as women. But the latest warnings suggest that endometriosis - an often debilitatingly painful condition that affects an estimated 2m women in Britain and can lead to infertility - may be triggered by wearing tight clothes during teenage years.
The cause of the disease, characterised by the build-up in the body of cells shed by the womb, has remained a mystery since it was first identified 70 years ago. But Professor John Dickinson, of the Wolfson Institute of Preventative Medicine in London, has just published research arguing that tight clothes may provide the force required to drive endometrial cells from the womb to accumulate at the ovaries.
"This would help explain why there was an awful lot of chronic abdominal pain in upper-class ladies of the Victorian age, who were restricting themselves like mad," says Dickinson, a former senior professor at Bart's hospital in London. His hunch is supported by the fact that the condition seems not to exist in countries where loose clothing is the norm. "Almost all women in India wear saris and have no cosmetic need for restricting garments," he writes in the latest edition of the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. "It would appear that researchers working in India or central Africa have little experience of endometriosis."
For men, tight underpants - like hot baths and showers - have long been thought to contribute to both infertility and testicular cancer. Since the testes are located in the scrotum to keep them cool, the hypothesis runs, artificial heating may cause similar problems to those that arise when the testes do not descend fully - a condition associated with increased incidences of testicular cancer. The jury, though, is still out.
"It's never been more than a hypothesis," says Dr Robert Huddart, an expert on male cancers at the Institute of Cancer Research. "We've been wearing tighter clothes in the last 20 years, sperm counts are falling and testicular cancer is more frequent. But another possibility is that men are getting fatter, and have more oestrogen, or that there are oestrogen-related pollutants in the environment."
A more convincing garment-related hazard emerges from the desperate male attempt to ignore extra pounds put on around the belly. Dr Octavio Bessa Jr, from Stamford, Connecticut, recently noticed a curious coincidence among a group of his male patients who constantly complained of stomach problems including heartburn and distension. Though they seemed in good health, all wore trousers at least two inches too small for their waists. When they switched to baggier varieties with braces - perhaps a style compromise too far for some - the pain disappeared.
His findings were found to have parallels for women earlier this year by Dr William Dickey of Altnagelvin Hospital in Londonderry who, with an admirable ear for a soundbite, diagnosed a society-wide epidemic of "designer dyspepsia". He speculates that the contemporary penchant for flattering, restrictive "hold-in" underwear is leading to a massive increase in cases of dyspepsia - the build-up of gas bubbles produced as part of the normal digestive process which the body cannot release.
For the most evangelical of naturist campaigners, that is only the beginning. Shield your body from broad daylight, they argue, and you harbour bacteria, prevent the synthesis of vitamin D, and - in the case of artificial fibres such as nylon - risk higher incidences of asthma and skin complaints. But burning your wardrobe is probably premature.
"At this stage, there is only suggestive evidence," says Dr Huddart of the claims that tight pants cause cancer. "All people have done so far is to put two and two together and make six."
