Bras

11 Expert Tips for Finding the Right Bra Size and Fit

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11 Expert Tips for Finding the Right Bra Size and Fit

Did you know you have more than one bra size?
a woman shopping for bras

For many people, bra shopping falls somewhere on the emotional scale between flat-out disappointing and totally traumatic, and the same could be said for the actual wearing of said bras. Many women are wearing uncomfortable bras that dig into their skin, slip off their shoulders, and create awkward spillage situations—and then rip them off their bodies the minute they get home. A lot of this can be traced back to the lingerie store: If you don’t know how to find the right bra (or even the right bra size!), you’re not going to get one that’s best for you. Put simply, women aren’t getting the support they need to get the support they need.

To make sure you get the most out of this experience, I reached out to three stylists and bra fitting experts who gave a detailed rundown of tips you should consider when buying a bra. Their advice, from breaking down bra components to telltale signs when your bra is too small or too big, is useful for women of all ages and sizes. Read on for 11 things every bra-wearing person should know.

1. Most of the support comes from the band.

Cups hold the breasts in place, but the band is responsible for about 90 percent of the actual support (strapless bras exist for a reason). So while the straps may seem like they’re there to hold up your bust, they are really there to help keep your cup flush with your body and to shape your breast. In fact, if your band and cup both fit well, you should be able to slip off your straps and take a few steps while your bra stays in place, bra expert Kimmay Caldwell from Hurray Kimmay tells SELF.

2. You need to know your size and your “sister size.”

Just like with other notoriously difficult-to-shop-for items, like jeans, there’s a wide variation in how bras of the same size will fit from brand to brand, even from one style to another. That’s why experts say women should know both their true size and their sister sizes. If a bra doesn’t fit in your regular size, it might work in your sister size.

The rule of thumb is as follows: If you go up in the band, go down in the cup and vice versa. For example, a 32C could possibly fit a 30D or a 34B. If you’re a 34C, you might find bras that fit better in a 36B or a 32D.

Knowing your sister size is useful to accommodate for size differences between brands. It is also a good resource if your “real size” is hard to shop for. People with smaller bands and large cup sizes, or larger bands and smaller cup sizes, will benefit most from sister sizing.

3. There’s an equation for figuring out your band and cup size.

Your bra size is a ratio that combines the measurements of your cup (letters AA-M) and band size (numbered 28-44). It’s a really good idea for any woman to get a professional bra fitting at a boutique—you might be surprised what a bra expert will tell you, such as you’ve been wearing the wrong size your whole adult life. You can also measure yourself at home with some tape.

To measure at home, you’ll need two measurements: around your back and under your bust for your band size, and around your back over your nipples for your cup size. You’ll then subtract the difference. For example, if your bust measures 35 inches and your under-bust (or rib cage) 32 inches, you’ll be a 32C because 35 minus 32 equals 3, and that number corresponds to the letter “C” in the alphabet.

4. If your breasts are two different sizes, round up.

It’s totally normal and really common to have one breast that is bigger than the other. If the difference is significant enough that it makes bra shopping even more complicated than it already is, Cora Harrington, lingerie expert and author of the upcoming book In Intimate Detail: How to Choose, Wear, and Love Lingerie, suggests fitting to the larger breast. If you want, you can even out the appearance by adding a bra cutlet to the smaller breast, or getting a bra with removable pads and taking them out on the big side.

5. If bras straps are digging into your shoulders, it could mean your cups are too small…

If your breasts are spilling out around the edges of the cup, they might be putting a lot of extra weight on the straps—and you may find yourself pulling the straps taut to hold them in check. Either way, your shoulders would probably benefit from larger cups.

6. …or your band is too big.

Your straps could also be digging into your shoulders if your band is too loose, making it so your straps are doing all the work. Take a look behind you in the mirror: If your straps are pulled so tight that they’re yanking your strap up, it’s probably too big or is too stretched out to do its job.

7. If your straps are slipping, it could be one of a few signs that your cups are too big.

Another tell is if the center gore, or the center panel on the front your bra between the cups, is floating away. It should lay flat against the middle of your chest. And obviously, if the cups are gapping because your breasts are not filling them all the way, you may want to go down a cup size.

8. The band should be snug, not suffocating or loose.

When you’ve got the right band size, you should be able to fit your finger between your back and the strap with only about an inch of stretch. Your band is too small if the underwire is squeezing or digging in your breast tissue. But looser is not better when it comes to support. Caldwell notes that most people think loose means more comfort (think: caftans or sweatpants), but that doesn’t work for bras. Remember that the band is what accomplishes most of the holding-up of the breasts, so a loose band that rides up between your shoulder blades will not provide the support you need and leave you less comfortable in the long run.

To keep your band fitting as well as possible for as long as possible, Caldwell advises you start off by wearing your bra on the loosest hook, so when you bra starts to feel worn out, you can use the second and then third hook for more grip.

9. “Full bust,” “full figure,” and “plus size” mean different things.

According to 2016 a survey of 2,000 shoppers by lingerie retailer Rigby & Peller, the most popular sizes for women across the country is between 32DDD and 34G (that’s 32E and 34F in UK bra sizing). More brands offer bras in a range of larger sizing, sometimes labeled as plus size, full bust, or full figure. They all mean slightly different things:

-Women with a small band and large cup size are considered full bust. That includes sizes of a DD cup or larger and a 36 band or less. Full bust sizes includes sizes like 28G, 30F, 32E, and 34H.

–Plus size for bras have a band size of 38 or larger.

–Full figure encompasses sizes DD+ with a 38 or larger band. All full figure bras are also plus size, but not all plus size bras are full figure: A 38F would be considered full figure and plus size, but a 40B would be just plus size.

10. Different bra styles and materials serve different purposes.

Ideally, your bra options should complement your wardrobe. You want styles that are versatile, but comfortable enough to take you from day to night. You also want multiple bras so that you don’t stretch a bra out too fast. The experts I spoke to agreed that everyone should have at least:

-Two traditional-style bras, like a smooth T-shirt bra in your skin tone, or in black, which would cover about 70 to 80 percent of your wardrobe.

-A sports bra that minimizes bounce during physical activities, but doesn’t impede your performance. You might want different bras with different levels of support for high impact activities like running versus yoga or Pilates. (Plus, if you work out a lot, you’ll want several so that you’re not constantly washing them.)

-A convertible bra that can be strapless, racerback, halter, or criss-cross for tops with “unusual” necklines and for formal occasions.

-A non-underwire bra or bralette you can wear traveling or lounging. Just make sure you can adjust the straps to get the best fit.

The fabric and technology of a bra is also important to take into consideration, Jenny Altman, fashion stylist and lingerie expert from the blog I Love a Good, tells SELF. “That’s why it’s important to ask yourself a few questions when picking a fabric: What do you need that bra to do for you? Does it wick away sweat? Do you want a lace detail? Or do you have sensitive skin and need a softer fabric?”

11. Bras don’t last forever—even your favorite one has to be replaced when it no longer gives you the support it used to.

The experts I spoke to said that depending on your size, how well you take care of your bras (never throw them in dryer!), and how many you have on rotation, a good, basic bra should last about a year. Washing them gently by hand (after typically after three to four wears) and rotating your bras (that is, not wearing the same one multiple days in a row) will also help keep the bands from stretching out too quickly. But no matter what you do, you’ll have to say goodbye at some point, so keep a lookout for signs, like the band creeping up your back, telling you it’s time to go bra shopping.

Keywords

Shopping, bras

Dressed To Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras

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Bra-freedom is busting out all over! Women everywhere are discovering that wearing bras can make their breasts droopy and stretched out, but also cause cysts, pain, and cancer.

For some women, enough said. The bra goes. It was always so uncomfortable, it was the first thing they took off after work anyway. More women are becoming bra-free in the name of comfort and health.

Dressed to kill

For other women, no way! The bra stays no matter what. And the cancer detection and treatment industry loves these women. They want women to wear bras. With one million bras sold each day in the US alone, that’s a lot of women binding and constricting the health out of their breasts in the name of fashion.

Nothing new there.

Corsets bound women for centuries, to the point of disease and death. Constriction is not a good thing for circulation. Nevertheless, this fashion of body shaping went on for centuries, despite its toll on women’s health.

Bras are really breast corsets. They shape the breasts, and this requires harmful pressure and compression of the delicate breast tissue.

Harmful fashions are not new. In fact, foot binding in China deformed feet to the point that toes would rot away. It was considered erotic to unwrap a bound foot, clean it, and re-wrap it. This lasted for a thousand years, despite its toll on women. It seems that harmful fashions are not ended simply because they are harmful. It’s not necessarily that the fashion designers of the time have it against women, it’s just that the health impacts of such fashions are never.

The Campaign of Misinformation

Almost twenty years ago, my partner Soma Grismaijer and I announced the results of our 1991-93 Bra and Breast Cancer study in our book, Dressed To Kill.

Bras, we discovered, are the leading cause of breast cancer. Like corsets, they constrict and interfere with circulation. Lymph fluid cannot easily drain from a bra-constricted breast. This stagnant lymph fluid cannot be adequately flushed away, concentrating waste products and toxins in the slowly toxifying breasts. Backed-up fluid results in cysts and pain. Ultimately, this can lead to cancer.

Essentially, a bra-free woman has about the same incidence of breast cancer as a man. The tighter and longer a bra is worn, the higher the incidence of breast cancer. 24/7 bra wearers have over 100 times the incidence as a bra-free woman. These findings have been recently confirmed by studies in China and Venezuela. A 1991 Harvard study also found a significant bra/cancer link.

However, to the cancer detection and treatment industry, this is called “nonsense”. To the industry that makes billions of dollars each year giving mammograms, mastectomies, radiation and chemotherapies, and then protheses and bras so these women can look “normal”, the concept of bras contributing to breast cancer is “absurd”.

In fact, the American Cancer Society’s spokesman, Dan Gansler, stated for the New York Times, “Because the idea of bras’ causing breast cancer is so scientifically implausible, it seems unlikely that researchers will ever spend their time and resources to test it in a real epidemiological study,” he told the Times for a Q&A piece.

The article explains that:

“He (Gansler) and colleagues compared National Cancer Institute data on breast cancer risk for women treated for melanoma who had several underarm lymph nodes removed and those who did not. The surgery, which is known to block lymph drainage from breast tissue, did not detectably increase breast cancer rates, the study found, meaning that it is extremely unlikely that wearing a bra, which affects lymph flow minimally if at all, would do so.”

When I saw this, I did some research.

The “study” is really a letter in the Breast Journal, run by the American Cancer Society: Axillary Lymphatic Disruption does not Increase Risk of Breast Carcinoma, in The Breast Journal, Volume 15, Issue 4, pages 438–439, July/August 2009. As a letter, the information was not peer reviewed. Not all the data was shown. It was an editorial, not a scientific report.

Interestingly, their report did show a significant increase in skin cancers resulting from lymph node removal! This supports the hypothesis, which they wanted to disprove, that lymphatic blockage could cause cancer. (BTW, this has been known to be the case since the 1930”²s)

Instead of admitting an increase in cancers, they focused only on the breast cancer results. It found that there was not a significant increase in breast cancers. However, it mentions that there was not enough data for this conclusion to be statistically valid. In other words, there was not enough data to tell the impact on breast cancer.

Of course, their “study” was designed to disprove the bra/cancer connection. Gansler did what no scientist should do. He had a bias and went out to prove a point, results be damned. The increased skin cancer results did not support his plan, so he ignored the data. The breast cancer data was too small a sample to make a conclusion, but they made one anyway.

Not surprisingly, it was the same conclusion that they started out with!

Unfortunately, this “information” is supported from the American Cancer Society, the pre-eminent cancer information source. They should not be able to lie and get away with it. However, the media is paid to report what they are told by the ACS, not to question it. The media spreads this misinformation because it is paid to. The payers are the cancer detection and treatment industry, as well as the lingerie industry, which also funds breast cancer research.

The last thing the lingerie industry wants is a class action lawsuit. Their goal is to make sure there is no further research into the bra/cancer link. Without a long list of studies, the issue can be called a “myth” and no lawsuits can succeed – they hope.

Aiding their suppression of the issue is the cancer industry, which is not interested in rocking a boat that now nets thembillions each year detecting and treating this disease.

Pink champagne anyone? Let’s celebrate raising more money for research into cancer cell lines, genetics, new treatment drugs, new radiation procedures, new diagnostic tests… anything but the link between breast cancer and bras.

A Health.com article is at the forefront of keeping the bra/cancer link ignored and suppressed. Quoted by national news networks and used as an October 2013 breast cancer informercial, this article not only calls the bra/cancer link a myth but also says breast cancer is not preventable.

Called 25 Breast Cancer Myths Busted, this malignant article claims:

Myth: Breast cancer is preventable.

Reality: Alas, no. Although it is possible to identify risk factors (such as family history and inherited gene mutations) and make lifestyle changes that can lower your risk (reducing or eliminating alcohol consumption, losing weight, getting regular exercise and screenings, and quitting smoking), roughly 70% of women diagnosed with breast cancer have no identifiable risk factors, meaning that the disease occurs largely by chance and according to as-yet-unexplained factors.

Okay, even if you don’t get the bra/cancer link, it’s easy to see the bias in this statement. If these factors are as-yet-unexplained, then how do you know it will not make prevention possible once these factors are discovered?

As for the 70% of cases that are “unexplained”, the reason for this is because they are ignoring the bra. They have looked at every lifestyle factor they could think of, but have deliberately ignored the bra, which already has a scientifically proven history of causing breast problems.

But this reasoning has no impact on the cancer industry and its pink campaign. They don’t want to know the factors that cause this disease if it cannot be sold in patented pill or bottle form.

Consensus? Widely debunked as unscientific? No reason or evidence is provided. So I put together a few things for the interested reader. The rest is up to you.

The breast cancer link to bras

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The birth of feminism in the late 1960s and early 1970s featured young women burning bras as a counterpoint to young men burning their draft cards. Bra burning was a social statement. Now there’s more discussion regarding the medical merits of those demonstrations.

Breast cancer

Ironically, it was an American woman who invented the bra around the turn of the 20th century, according to Ken L. Smith, a health educator and Breast Health Facilitator for the American Cancer Society.

Up until the beginning of the 20th century, corsets were what made women exhibit that desired hourglass figure and inadvertently pushed up the bust line for fashionable clothing of that time. The problem was, corsets messed with internal organs while shaping those hourglass figures, and their tightness resulted in women fainting easily and often.

The birth of the bra

In 1893, Marie Tucek made a “breast supporter” that looked like a modern brassiere. But, later, Mary Phelps Jacobs designed a better version and called it a brassiere. She patented it and sold the patent to a company named Warner Brothers Corset Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, for $1,500. It caught on.

By the 1950s, teenage girls were urged to buy and use training bras to hold their breasts firmly in a desirable way and prevent sagging. But even the brassier industry admits that the only time bras prevent sagging is while wearing them.

Ken Smith suggests that using artificial breast support long enough will cause the breasts’ cup-shaped suspensory Cooper’s ligaments to atrophy, allowing the breasts to sag over time anyway. Exercises that strengthen pectoral muscles can be helpful.

It’s recommended to use a one-piece sports bra for exercising. Some women use one-piece sports bras as a healthier alternative to regular bras when not exercising.

Bras and breast health

The connection between wearing bras and painful and bothersome non-malignant breast fibrocystic disease as well as malignant breast cancer was hardly mentioned until the book Dressed to Kill by researchers Sydney Ross Singer and Soma Grismaijer came out in 1995.

They surveyed 5,000 women and discovered that women who wore bras for 12 hours or more greatly increased breast cancer risk compared to women who wore bras less.

Dr. Gregory Heigh of Florida has found that over 90% of women with fibrocystic breast disease find improvement when they stop wearing their brassieres. There are case testimonies (source below) from breast fibrocystic disorder patients who realized this when they stopped or at least lessened brassiere use.

The connection between breast tumors, non-malignant or malignant, and bras has merit when considering the lymph drainage issues from wearing bras too often. The lymph system, which includes lymph nodes in the breasts, requires body movement to pump out the lymph nodes’ accumulation of toxic waste materials. That’s what bouncing on a rebounder is about.

Not only are breasts’ movements inhibited by bras, thus restricting proper lymph node draining, but the tight enclosures of bras constrict the breasts and constrict lymph material flow.

If a Florida doctor has observed 90% healing from fibrocystic breast disorders upon not wearing bras, with many other women offering testimonies with positive results on their bra abstinence, it follows that wearing bras less or not at all helps prevent breast cancer.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/045366_breast_cancer_bras_lymph_nodes.html#ixzz3xtJAXJ7Z

The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras.

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Bra-freedom is busting out all over! Women everywhere are discovering that wearing bras can make their breasts droopy and stretched out, but also cause cysts, pain, and cancer.

For some women, enough said. The bra goes. It was always so uncomfortable, it was the first thing they took off after work anyway. More women are becoming bra-free in the name of comfort and health.

Dressed to kill

For other women, no way! The bra stays no matter what. And the cancer detection and treatment industry loves these women. They want women to wear bras. With one million bras sold each day in the US alone, that’s a lot of women binding and constricting the health out of their breasts in the name of fashion.

Nothing new there.

Corsets bound women for centuries, to the point of disease and death. Constriction is not a good thing for circulation. Nevertheless, this fashion of body shaping went on for centuries, despite its toll on women’s health.

Bras are really breast corsets. They shape the breasts, and this requires harmful pressure and compression of the delicate breast tissue.

Harmful fashions are not new. In fact, foot binding in China deformed feet to the point that toes would rot away. It was considered erotic to unwrap a bound foot, clean it, and re-wrap it. This lasted for a thousand years, despite its toll on women. It seems that harmful fashions are not ended simply because they are harmful. It’s not necessarily that the fashion designers of the time have it against women, it’s just that the health impacts of such fashions are never considered.

The Campaign of Misinformation

Almost twenty years ago, my partner Soma Grismaijer and I announced the results of our 1991-93 Bra and Breast Cancer study in our book, Dressed To Kill.

Bras, we discovered, are the leading cause of breast cancer. Like corsets, they constrict and interfere with circulation. Lymph fluid cannot easily drain from a bra-constricted breast. This stagnant lymph fluid cannot be adequately flushed away, concentrating waste products and toxins in the slowly toxifying breasts. Backed-up fluid results in cysts and pain. Ultimately, this can lead to cancer.

Essentially, a bra-free woman has about the same incidence of breast cancer as a man. The tighter and longer a bra is worn, the higher the incidence of breast cancer. 24/7 bra wearers have over 100 times the incidence as a bra-free woman. These findings have been recently confirmed by studies in China and Venezuela. A 1991 Harvard study also found a significant bra/cancer link.

However, to the cancer detection and treatment industry, this is called “nonsense”. To the industry that makes billions of dollars each year giving mammograms, mastectomies, radiation and chemotherapies, and then protheses and bras so these women can look “normal”, the concept of bras contributing to breast cancer is “absurd”.

In fact, the American Cancer Society’s spokesman, Dan Gansler, stated for the New York Times, “Because the idea of bras’ causing breast cancer is so scientifically implausible, it seems unlikely that researchers will ever spend their time and resources to test it in a real epidemiological study,” he told the Times for a Q&A piece.

The article explains that:

“He (Gansler) and colleagues compared National Cancer Institute data on breast cancer risk for women treated for melanoma who had several underarm lymph nodes removed and those who did not. The surgery, which is known to block lymph drainage from breast tissue, did not detectably increase breast cancer rates, the study found, meaning that it is extremely unlikely that wearing a bra, which affects lymph flow minimally if at all, would do so.”

When I saw this, I did some research.

The “study” is really a letter in the Breast Journal, run by the American Cancer Society: Axillary Lymphatic Disruption does not Increase Risk of Breast Carcinoma, in The Breast Journal, Volume 15, Issue 4, pages 438–439, July/August 2009. As a letter, the information was not peer reviewed. Not all the data was shown. It was an editorial, not a scientific report.

Interestingly, their report did show a significant increase in skin cancers resulting from lymph node removal! This supports the hypothesis, which they wanted to disprove, that lymphatic blockage could cause cancer. (BTW, this has been known to be the case since the 1930′s)

Instead of admitting an increase in cancers, they focused only on the breast cancer results. It found that there was not a significant increase in breast cancers. However, it mentions that there was not enough data for this conclusion to be statistically valid. In other words, there was not enough data to tell the impact on breast cancer.

Of course, their “study” was designed to disprove the bra/cancer connection. Gansler did what no scientist should do. He had a bias and went out to prove a point, results be damned. The increased skin cancer results did not support his plan, so he ignored the data. The breast cancer data was too small a sample to make a conclusion, but they made one anyway.

Not surprisingly, it was the same conclusion that they started out with!

Unfortunately, this “information” is supported from the American Cancer Society, the pre-eminent cancer information source. They should not be able to lie and get away with it. However, the media is paid to report what they are told by the ACS, not to question it. The media spreads this misinformation because it is paid to. The payers are the cancer detection and treatment industry, as well as the lingerie industry, which also funds breast cancer research.

The last thing the lingerie industry wants is a class action lawsuit. Their goal is to make sure there is no further research into the bra/cancer link. Without a long list of studies, the issue can be called a “myth” and no lawsuits can succeed – they hope.

Aiding their suppression of the issue is the cancer industry, which is not interested in rocking a boat that now nets them billions each year detecting and treating this disease.

Pink champagne anyone? Let’s celebrate raising more money for research into cancer cell lines, genetics, new treatment drugs, new radiation procedures, new diagnostic tests… anything but the link between breast cancer and bras.

A Health.com article is at the forefront of keeping the bra/cancer link ignored and suppressed. Quoted by national news networks and used as an October 2013 breast cancer informercial, this article not only calls the bra/cancer link a myth but also says breast cancer is not preventable.

Called 25 Breast Cancer Myths Busted, this malignant article claims:

Myth: Breast cancer is preventable.

Reality: Alas, no. Although it is possible to identify risk factors (such as family history and inherited gene mutations) and make lifestyle changes that can lower your risk (reducing or eliminating alcohol consumption, losing weight, getting regular exercise and screenings, and quitting smoking), roughly 70% of women diagnosed with breast cancer have no identifiable risk factors, meaning that the disease occurs largely by chance and according to as-yet-unexplained factors.

Okay, even if you don’t get the bra/cancer link, it’s easy to see the bias in this statement. If these factors are as-yet-unexplained, then how do you know it will not make prevention possible once these factors are discovered?

As for the 70% of cases that are “unexplained”, the reason for this is because they are ignoring the bra. They have looked at every lifestyle factor they could think of, but have deliberately ignored the bra, which already has a scientifically proven history of causing breast problems.

But this reasoning has no impact on the cancer industry and its pink campaign. They don’t want to know the factors that cause this disease if it cannot be sold in patented pill or bottle form.

Consensus? Widely debunked as unscientific? No reason or evidence is provided. So I put together a few things for the interested reader. The rest is up to you.

Studies that Support the Bra/Cancer Link:

  1. 1991 Harvard study (CC Hsieh, D Trichopoulos (1991). Breast size, handedness and breast cancer risk. European Journal of Cancer and Clinical Oncology 27(2):131-135.). This study found that, “Premenopausal women who do not wear bras had half the risk of breast cancer compared with bra users…”
  2. 1991-93 U.S. Bra and Breast Cancer Study by Singer and Grismaijer, published in Dressed To Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras (Avery/Penguin Putnam, 1995; ISCD Press, 2005). Found that bra-free women have about the same incidence of breast cancer as men. 24/7 bra wearing increases incidence over 100 times that of a bra-free woman.
  3. Singer and Grismaijer did a follow-up study in Fiji, published in Get It Off! (ISCD Press, 2000). Found 24 case histories of breast cancer in a culture where half the women are bra-free. The women getting breast cancer were all wearing bras. Given women with the same genetics and diet and living in the same village, the ones getting breast disease were the ones wearing bras for work purposes.
  4. A 2009 Chinese study (Zhang AQ, Xia JH, Wang Q, Li WP, Xu J, Chen ZY, Yang JM (2009). [Risk factors of breast cancer in women in Guangdong and the countermeasures]. In Chinese. Nan Fang Yi Ke Da Xue Xue Bao. 2009 Jul;29(7):1451-3.) found that NOT sleeping in a bra was protective against breast cancer, lowering the risk 60%.
  5. 2011 a study was published, in Spanish, confirming that bras are causing breast disease and cancer. http://www.portalesmedicos.com/publicaciones/articles/3691/1/Patologias-mamarias-generadas-por-el-uso-sostenido-y-seleccion-incorrecta-del-brassier-en-pacientes-que-acuden-a-la-consulta-de-mastologia- It found that underwired and push-up bras are the most harmful, but any bra that leaves red marks or indentations may cause disease.

Studies that Refute the Bra/Cancer Link:

None

Physicians Who Support the Bra/Cancer Link:

Michael Schachter MD, FACAM 

– Director of the Schachter Center for Complementary Medicine, graduate of Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons.

Over 85 percent of the lymph fluid flowing from the breast drains to the armpit lymph nodes. Most of the rest drains to the nodes along the breast bone. Bras and other external tight clothing can impede flow.

The nature of the bra, the tightness, and the length of time worn, will all influence the degree of blockage of lymphatic drainage. Thus, wearing a bra might contribute to the development of breast cancer as a result of cutting off lymphatic drainage, so that toxic chemicals are trapped in the breast.

Dr. Joseph Mercola

– Osteopathic physician, board-certified in family medicine, served as the chairman of the family medicine department at St. Alexius Medical Center for 5 years, trained in both traditional and natural medicine, founder of Mercola.com

1 – http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/05/19/Can-Wearing-Your-Bra-Cause-Cancer.aspx

Many physicians and researchers now agree that wearing a tight fitting bra can cut off lymph drainage, which can contribute to the development of breast cancer,[1] as your body will be less able to excrete all the toxins you’re exposed to on a daily basis. Aluminum from antiperspirants, for example, is one potentially dangerous source of toxins that can accumulate if your lymph drainage is impaired.

2 – http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/05/21/breast-cancer-young-women.aspx

Avoid wearing underwire bras. There is a good deal of data that metal underwire bras can heighten your breast cancer risk.

Dr. Mandy Ward

– Naturopathic Doctor, contributing writer for www.keep-a-breast-org

1 – http://www.keep-a-breast.org/blog/roadrunner-supports-our-girls/

According to Dr. Mandy, who is our naturopathic expert, 85% of the lymphatic fluid must drain its waste around the armpit area, while 15% drains along the breast bone. Where does your bra usually wrap around your body? The bra seems to obstruct the very place that needs to be unobstructed! Studies have shown that the tightness of a bra can cut off the lymphatic system from draining properly. This means that your bra could be obstructing your body’s natural flow which can also increase your risks for cancer.

Dr. Cheryl Kasdorf

– Naturopathic Physician, founder of drcherylkasdorf.com

1 – http://drcherylkasdorf.com/2013/09/30/bowenwork-celebrates-breast-health/

Tight bras, poor food choices, and lack of exercise can hamper lymphatic removal of fluids from the breast. That can result in breast tenderness and is a risk factor for breast disease including cancer.

Dr. Elizabeth R. Vaughan MD

– a 4th generation physician, she is Board Certified by the American Board of Clinical Metal Toxicology, the American Board of Emergency Medicine, and the American Board of Internal Medicine, founder of vaughanintegrative.com

1 – http://www.drvaughan.com/2013/09/bumps-and-breasts-and-bras-oh-my.html

Wearing a bra puts pressure on and around the breasts and restricts lymphatic flow. Consider this: lightly resting one finger on your arm will create about 5mm of mercury pressure in that location, which is enough to stop lymphatic flow. The restriction of lymphatic flow that tight bra straps have around the breasts, shoulders and back is much more significant…. take off that bra! At the very least, wear it less than 12 hours a day. Ideally, though, avoid wearing it whenever possible. Visit BraFree.org for tips on how to easily and discreetly make the transition.

Dr. Jennifer Shine Dyer

– a pediatric endocrinologist and behavioral researcher with a Masters of Public Health in health behavior studies, and creator of the award-winning EndoGoal Diabetes Rewards App.

1 – http://www.shape.com/lifestyle/beauty-style/7-health-dangers-hiding-your-closet/slide/4

“tight bras can reduce the lymphatic flow to the breasts thus creating an environment with more ‘cellular waste and toxins’ that should have been cleared by the lymphatic system.”

Professor Marek Zadrozny

– head of the Clinic of Breast Diseases and Oncology surgery at the Polish Mother Memorial Hospital Research Institute, collaboration with Polish lingerie manufacturer Corin and Lodz University of Technology on a thermographic study of interactions between the surface of a bra and a woman’s body.

1 – http://www.lingerieinsight.com/article-4099-thermovision-is-key-to-bra-manufacturing-study/

Wearing a bra that is too tight can cause pressure, which may lead to dangerous health problems, like lymphatic drainage disorders, edema and or swollen lymph nodes

Dr. Gerald Lemole MD

– served as Chief of Cardiovascular Surgery at Christiana Care Health Services from 1986 through 2006, subsequently served as the Medical Director for the Center of Integrative Health at The Preventive Medicine and Rehabilitation Institute.

1 – http://breastnest.com/breastnest.php

Women who wear bras don’t have normal movement in their breast tissue. As a result, their lymphatics slow, and toxins stay in the tissue.

I could go on, but you get the point. Breast cancer prevention is up to each woman. Don’t wait for the people who profit from cancer to tell you the answer.

For more information, please see: http://arizonaadvancedmedicine.com/are-you-dressed-to-kill-the-link-between-breast-cancer-and-bras/