Most women will not walk out the door without wearing their bra. We consider our bra a vital part of our fashion wardrobe and would not feel appropriately dressed without wearing one, especially women who work around other people. We also think that we must wear a bra for support to prevent sagging. A recent French study of younger women (ages 18-35) reveals that wearing a bra does not help us defy gravity and our reliance on wearing bras may even promote the sagging of our breasts.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/11/women-bras-study-france-false-necessity_n_3062114.html
As this article implies, older women who take off their bras now may not be able to reverse or prevent further sagging.
(No matter how old you are, women can do exercises to strengthen the supportive muscles of their breasts (our back, shoulder and chest areas) that will help keep them perkier, says Shirley Archer, a health educator at Stanford University School of Medicine and author of Busting Out: Putting Your Best Breasts Forward.)
Obviously wearing a bra to help us look good in our clothes is a good thing, because when we look good we feel good. The large breasted woman may need to wear a bra for her short term health and quality of life if her sagging breasts affect her posture and cause back pain.
Aside from helping us look good and giving us support, how many of us have thought about how bra wearing affects our breast health? The fact is women of all breast sizes who wear bras, especially for extended periods of time and especially bras with underwires, are negatively impacting their breast health.
Bra wearing confines and constricts the breasts, reducing lymphatic drainage. It is very important to have optimal lymphatic drainage to remove the toxins from the breasts that contribute to breast congestion and inflammation. Estrogen is produced in the breasts and fat cells and if the lymph system is clogged, the breast environment becomes stagnant and unhealthy, leading us down a path we all fear.
We can all reduce the amount of time we wear our bras (please do not wear them to bed at night) and consider changing the type of bras we wear. Here are some resources for bras without underwires:
A couple of good local resources are I.C. London (they sell Lupo’s Bras and other wireless bras) and Dillards (they sell wireless bras by Wacoal: http://www.dillards.com/product/Wacoal-BSmooth-Bralette_301_-1_301_503575562?df=03776680_zi_black_white
Wearing the increasingly popular and fashionable camisoles is a good alternative to wearing bras.
