Totes carrying a newborn.
After I started wearing a fanny pack, I became very aware of just how much stuff women are carrying around with them every day. Purses. Gym bags. Work bags. Little bags within big bags. So many bags!
Lauren Zaser / BuzzFeed Life
"Some of my colleagues and I call it 'pretty purse syndrome,'" Dr. Houman Danesh, director of integrative pain management at Mount Sinai Hospital, tells BuzzFeed Life. He says most women position the bag on top of their trapezius and levator scapulae muscles, which, combined with poor posture and muscles that are already tired from leaning forward at a computer all day, leads to pain in the shoulders and neck.
"It starts with tight muscles in their neck region and can progress to arthritis of the cervical spine," he says. That neck pain can lead to a headache at the back of your head and trigger migraines.
I wanted to find out just how much crap they were schlepping around each day. We weighed the hauls from 31 different women.
