If you are male with no hair on lower legs
Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2022 2:02 pmIf you are male and have hair loss on your lower legs, does that mean you have a disease such as PAD or diabetes?
It could mean your socks are too tight.
Really.
That happened to my husband. We both had been wearing the Dr Scholl's diabetic socks for years because they were soft, warm, and stretchy without being tight like most other socks. They then changed the fabric and shape of these socks so there's no knit cuff, no puffy softness in the knit, and they were a lot tighter.
I stopped after the first wearing - the constricted my calf so much my ankles got puffy and edematous. Press a finger on my flesh and the dent stayed for at least an hour. I tossed the unworn pairs from the package in a donation box and started my search for replacements. It's been a few years and I haven't found anything comparable to the original diabetic socks yet.
My husband, on the other hand, said his new socks were a bit snug, but he could live with it. They fit close to what he wore before he discovered the Dr Scholl's. A few weeks later he started complaining of numbness in his toes and a floppy gait.I insisted he make an appointment with his doctor. The doc had him remove his socks for the exam and noticed the top of the sock was almost as tight as a tourniquet, and he had no hair on his calves any more, something I never noticed because my husband wears his socks to bed every night.
Well, after a diagnosis of peripheral neuritis and a prognosis of a full return of feeling to his toes and a normal gait eventually (nerves heal at about 1mm a day, so it'll take a few months, he added), the doc had no idea when the hair would return.
My husband eventually found socks to his liking, and they're much shorter crew socks, not knee high ones. The hair did return to the parts of the calf that aren't under his socks, but his leg just above the ankle where the socks sit still remain hairless. It's close to 20 years now since that happened.