Wearing a Bra does not Cause Breast Cancer: Study

Your brassier does not cause breast cancer, finds a study.

Wearing a bra helps support breasts and retains shape without sagging. The modern lingerie is a replacement for the old-fashione tight corsets opposed by many health experts for their harmful health effects.

The bras too are considered a risk for women's health and scientists believe wearing the inner garment for longer duration leads to collection of toxic waste and carcinogenic chemicals produced by lymph gland around the breasts. This causes growth of cancer tumor.

Bu a new findings holds that  wearing bras have nothing to do with breast cancer risk in women.

The research trial by the University of Washington involved around 1,500 postmenopausal women of whom almost a thousand were either diagnosed with invasive ductile carcinoma (IDC) or invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC). The participants were interviewed to note the type of bras they used, cup size and average number of hours they wore the inner wear in a day.

The analysis revealed no relation between breast cancer and usage of bra, its type and cup size.

"There have been some concerns one of the reasons why breast cancer may be more common in developed countries compared with developing countries is differences in bra wearing patterns. Given how common bra wearing is, we thought this was an important question to address," said  Lu Chen, study author and researcher at the University of Washington, reports the Telegraph.

"Our study found no evidence wearing a bra increases a woman's risk for breast cancer. The risk was similar no matter how many hours per day women wore a bra, whether they wore a bra with an underwire, or at what age they first began wearing a bra," adds Chen.

The authors believe earlier theories that suggest underwire bars restrict the disposal of lymphatic waste have very little biological basis to associate the risk of breast cancer with usage of the inner wear.

More information is available online in the Journal of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.