Can a Bra Promote the Development of Breast Cancer?

At regular intervals, this thesis ghosts through the media. To date, there is confusion among women, the claim has not gone silent. Thus, it is discussed and puzzled in Internet forums. Recently, it is also heard that bras kept on at night increase the risk of breast cancer.

The history of the bra

More than a hundred years ago, the brassiere was invented in France. During the women’s emancipation movement in the seventies, it was considered a “liberation” not to wear a bra. The garment was even considered a symbol of women’s oppression and discipline. Around this time, the first reports also emerged that bras could cause cancer due to constricting effects.

Medical opinion

A medical explanation was even found for the allegedly so harmful underwear: According to this, bras would squeeze lymphatic channels, so that metabolic waste products could not be drained. The fact that this is nonsense from a medical point of view has not hindered the spread of the rumor.

Prof. Dr. Volker Barth of the Institute for Mammodiagnostics in Esslingen, Germany, told MEDIZIN-WELT: “The bra has no influence whatsoever on the development of breast cancer, neither in small breasts, nor in large breasts, nor in operated breasts in any form. The alleged breast cancer risk by the bra ghosts for 35 years in regular intervals of one to two years by the media, without anybody having an explanation for it. The same applies to deodorants and the like. Effectively, nothing happens through the bra.”

The cause of the speculation

Because girls and women with large breasts are more likely to wear bras than their smaller-breasted gender counterparts, the relationship of breast size in young women and a later incidence of breast cancer has been studied. It was also rumored that girls with large breasts are at the highest risk because they are forced to wear constricting bras at an early age. This connection could not be proven either.

However, it is known that hormonal risk factors and the more difficult early detection of diseases in large breasts are the reasons for the slightly increased risk of breast cancer in women with large breasts. However, bras themselves have no detectable effect on the development of cancer even in these women.