If you really think about it, the whole idea of a necktie is rather ridiculous. (Check out today’s “From the Archives” like for more about its history.) It is, literally, a noose that you put around your neck. That is, it’s a device not dissimilar to ones used to kill people. And we don’t wear them for practical purposes; they’re fashion over function. But are they dangerous? Maybe. In 2018, Robin Lüddecke and Thomas Lindner, both professors at the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, co-led a study to determine just that. Specifically, as their paper notes, “negative cerebrovascular effects can be expected by compressing jugular veins and carotids by a necktie.” Or in other words, they wondered if wearing a tie constricted the amount of blood flowing into the wearer’s brain. Seems like a reasonable thing to guess, but being scientists, an experiment was in order.
