Doctors say that bras may be bad for breast health. Hey, it’s science!
Ditching a bra could make your breasts perkier, experts have claimed.
Women’s health specialists and plastic surgeons have suggested that the tight pressure from a bra can weaken tissues around the breasts over time, causing them to droop.
The uplifted look is also said to be due to the gradual strengthening of back muscles that happens when you’re unsupported, improving posture.
If only some scientist were courageous and dedicated enough to devote a lifetime to studying breasts. Oh wait!
A 15-year study conducted by Dr Jean-Denis Rouillon, a sports science expert from the University of Besançon, France, revealed that bras did more harm than good when it came to perkiness.
In the study, he examined changes in the breasts of hundreds of women over many years.
He concluded that women who didn’t wear bras had nipples that were seven milliliters higher than those who did.
Dr Rouillon said in a radio interview: ‘Medically, physiologically, anatomically—breasts gain no benefit from being denied gravity. On the contrary, they get saggier with a bra.’
What about personal testimony?
Dr Lucky Sekhon, a board-certified OB/GYN and reproductive endocrinologist, told Well+Good that people have long believed the opposite – that not wearing a bra causes drooping.
This, she says, is a common misconception.
Women who have gone long periods without wearing a bra often report that this leads their breasts to being firmer, rounder, and perkier over time.’
So there you have it — unless you hate health and science, you should stop wearing a bra.
I agree with this…. my wife said she would never go without a bra… I would like if she did… she is afraid of her big nipples showing.
This sounds so great, but what about middle-aged women who are a bit larger? It’s painful not to have any support at all!
So, does Sexy Corte go braless in general?
First, I should have gone to med school.
Second, it doesn’t look like the volumes of data from National Geographic was incorporated into the study. There may be some upward skew in the results due to this.
I’ve heard conflicting claims about this before, but that study by Rouillon sounds pretty conclusive. Thanks!
An obvious application is to normalize bralessness at home. Is this something that your family has tried?
Additionally, do you have advice for doing it outside the home? I suspect it would violate most workplaces’ dress codes, even if using nipple guards (like the kind that runners use). Nipple guards could be useful for weeknight dates or Saturday errands, but that probably amounts to several hours per week at most.
Altogether, I can see how to decrease bra-wearing from ~100 hours per week to ~50, but I’d be surprised if most women could go much lower than that.
Because the Daily Mail is such a reliable source.
Seriously, in the UK people call it the Daily Fail because it’s known for publishing stories under sensational headlines that turn out not to be 100% true.
As far as I can tell, the research mentioned in the article hasn’t been published in a peer reviewed journal and doesn’t actually show that stopping wearing a bra has positive benefits because he didn’t actually study that. Instead, he looked at women between ages 18 and 35 and compared those who wore bras to those who did not.