Breast cancer and bras
I am a big fan of CrazySexyLife and was interested to see this article on cancer and toxic clothing posted recently. One section of the article talks about bras, and based on the text in the article, you could draw the conclusion that wearing a bra causes breast cancer.
Needless to say, I wanted to find out more, so I found the original research article referred to in the article on CrazySexyLife. Titled Breast size, handedness and breast cancer risk (1991, published in the European Journal of Cancer), the article does not, in fact, say anything of the kind. Turns out that women who wear bras have bigger breasts. Women with smaller breasts don’t need to or choose not to wear bras as often as women with larger breasts (makes sense). The conclusion drawn by the research is that it is likely that the correlation between bra use and breast cancer is actually related to breast size, which is often related to weight, and we’ve known for a long time that overweight women have a higher risk of cancer.
Personally, I like not wearing a bra when I’m sitting around the house, but I do like to wear them when I go out, particularly if I’m exercising and/or meeting with people. So I’m glad that wearing a bra doesn’t cause cancer (that we know of). And I’m lucky that I have relatively small breasts (although that didn’t keep me from getting breast cancer!), and I’m doing everything I can to stay thin to reduce my risk.
I also think it’s interesting that the research looked for a relationship between handedness and breast cancer (it had never occurred to me before to think there might be a relationship). Turns out there is a slightly higher occurrence of breast cancer on the left side compared to the right side. Who knew? Mine was on the left…
Anyway, the moral of this story is to check your references and find out the real deal before burning your bras, ladies.
