Support Or Compression Tights, What’s The Difference?

When we hear the words ‘leg support hosiery’ and ‘compression hosiery’ we often think one thing. We imagine the more mature lady who has problems with your legs. She needs to keep her legs covered and needs to wear this kind of hosiery. Maybe because of varicose veins and blood circulation issues. Are compression tights and stockings really only for those with an actual health issue? Should you be thinking of wearing leg support hosiery as well? Keep reading to find out what’s the difference between support and compression tights.

Who Can Wear Compression Tights?

Traditionally, compression tights have been considered a garment for older women with health issues. This is not actually the case any more. Ladies of all ages and walks of life wear leg support these days. Men as well. Indeed, it’s been clinically proven that support tights help you in many ways.

For example, if you are in a job where you are standing a lot, these are for you. So if you are a hairdresser, cabin crew, nurse, bartender, shop assistant, etc., it’s very important to wear support hosiery. Your leg support hosiery can help with the circulation of blood around your legs. At the same time, it can prevent blood from pooling at the ankles.

Younger People Also Wear Support Hosiery

This kind of hosiery is now much nicer to wear and is targeted at a younger public, who have a busy lifestyle, normally balancing work and family. If you have recently shopped for activewear, you must have also noticed compression is a trend in sportswear, too.

How Does It Feel To Wear Support Hosiery?

When you wear support hosiery, your legs feel so much better. Almost lighter. They are not as tired and, towards the end of the day, you have a feeling of general wellbeing that you don’t have if you wear regular hosiery.

There is only one disadvantage of wearing tights with support that we can think of. And that is the process of putting on the tights. If you have started to wear support tights only recently you surely remember how weird it feels. Especially the first time to try to put on some tights with support. The fabric, somehow, seems stronger than usual.

It’s normal to need a couple more minutes than usual to get these done. They sometimes feel like they won’t expand enough. Don’t panic. It won’t take you long to get used to putting them on and off. On the positive side, when you get the right size, they’ll stay in place all day long.

What’s The D ifference Between Support And Compression Tights?

Many people don’t know that support leg wear is not to be confused with compression leg wear. Support hosiery gives gentle support all the way up the leg. It usually helps to massage the legs but does not compress the legs in different places which is what compression leg wear does. Normally, compression leg wear has a tighter compression at the ankle and moves up the leg, gradually getting less and less compression, the higher it goes, until you reach the top of the leg when there is no compression at all.

Hosiery Manufacturers Don’t Make It So Easy…

Support hosiery is designed to help you feel less fatigued and your legs should not ache and throb at the end of the day. Still, many hosiery manufacturers prefer the word support to compression, because of that association we talked before between these type of products and older generations. So, you’ll often read about support tights with gradual compression in your tights packages. This is a decision many manufacturers took to launch their products to the younger public, so, even if it may lead to confusion if it gets younger people forgetting about preconceptions, it isn’t a bad move.