Is wearing a tie harmful?

By compressing the veins in the neck, tie-wearers could be pushing blood into the skull and creating an unhealthy build-up of pressure.

The difference isn't enough to be a serious health risk to most people, but it might cause problems for groups that are already at risk from blood pressure issues, like smokers or the elderly.

Some  studies (2) have already linked tight ties with an increase in pressure on the eyes, and a possible association with glaucoma risk as a result.

Using MRI scans, researchers analysed (1) 15 male volunteers who were wearing neckties tightened to a "point of slight discomfort", and 15 male volunteers who weren't wearing neckties at all.

Cerebral blood flow, the blood supply to the brain, was found to drop by an average of 7.5 percent in the men wearing a necktie, with no drop reported in the control group. The difference is likely to be caused by the extra pressure from the tie crushing blood vessels, the researchers say.

Meanwhile venous blood flow around the rest of the body wasn't affected in either of the two groups.

Blood flow to the brain is vital to its proper functioning, as you can imagine. It gives brain cells access to the oxygen, glucose, and nutrients needed to do its job, and if the supply dries up, that can cause temporary blips or, in severe cases, permanent damage.

An executive taking vital decisions needs his brain functioning at optimum level. So can less blood mean low performance, although a 7.5 percent drop is unlikely to cause noticeable symptoms? Moreover,   people who already have problems with blood flow – smokers, the elderly, those with high blood pressure, for example – might be more at risk. 

Even though the drop noticed in this small sample isn't too damaging, it is better to loosen your tie to your comfortable levels. 

And Doctors' ties have also been shown to be breeding grounds for some pathogens in hospitals, where infections can easily be spread. We certainly don't need that, do we?

However, there is  some evidence (level 3b evidence) that neckties are contaminated with pathogenic (and non-pathogenic) bacteria. The level of evidence was patchy and the studies were heterogeneous (3). 

Concerned that certain work attire worn by physicians might be a potential vector responsible for increasing the incidence of health-care-associated infections, the UK Department of Health introduced a Uniforms and Workwear dress code for National Health Service employees in 2007 (4). This policy has since become known as the "bare-below-the-elbow" attire policy as a means for reducing the spread of nosocomial infections. It was recommended that National Health Service staff wear short sleeves and avoid unnecessary jewellery and garments such as neckties when carrying out clinical activities.

To explore whether transmission of bacteria from tie to patient is possible, some researchers published a small study in 2012 (5) in which a physician simulated examining patients wearing different combinations of clothing inoculated with Micrococcus luteus . The two conditions studied were: 1) a shirt and unsecured tie with the distal 6 centimeters swabbed with fluid from a bacterial suspension, and 2) a shirt (but no tie) that was inoculated with bacteria at the area just above the belt where the distal portion of a tie would be. The physician examined a mannequin 10 times with each form of dress.  Six of 10 mannequins that were examined while a tie was worn were found by culture to be contaminated, as compared to 1 out of 10 without a tie (p=0.036). There had been no growth of cultures of the mannequins before the encounter with the physician. These results support the contention that it is possible for bacteria to be transmitted from a physician’s tie to a patient (5).

So we don't see doctors wearing ties these days while treating patients.  

Our minds are conditioned in a certain way and when we think about ties, we think about discipline, authority, culture, and good dressing sense.

This is not in the Indian dress culture though.

It is up to individuals to decide what they should or shouldn't wear and if this is based on scientific evidence, however weak this might be, it feels good.

Footnotes:

1. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00234-018-2048-7

2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1771792/

3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5878945/#:~:text=There...).

4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1382570/

5. https://www.clinicalcorrelations.org/2016/02/24/dont-tie-me-down-do...