Two for Tea or An Uplifting Story
I was reading a bit on the history of the bra. It’s totally fascinating how breasts have been this bizarre thing through history. They go from being undesirable to the point that women wore bandage-like wraps to minimize their bustlines, to cone shaped, to cleavage-city, to unbelievable breast implants. And why? All for the whims of whatever is considered fashionable at the moment.
Then I hit many articles about how wearing bras may be seriously linked to breast cancer. That’s frightening. Here are some statistics:
- Women who wore their bras 24 hours per day had a 3 out of 4 chance of developing breast cancer (in their study, n=2056 for the cancer group and n=2674 for the standard group).
- Women who wore bras more than 12 hour per day but not to bed had a 1 out of 7 risk.
- Women who wore their bras less than 12 hours per day had a 1 out of 152 risk.
- Women who wore bras rarely or never had a 1 out of 168 chance of getting breast cancer. The overall difference between 24 hour wearing and not at all was a 125-fold difference.
There are also groups that claim that bras do not cause cancer, mostly claiming that it has not “been scientifically proven.” But, oh wait, no studies have really been done on it. So, I guess that the possibility is still there.
I’m not really coming to any conclusions. I just found the research of bras and why people wear them to be fascinating. The theories of bras causing cancer (especially when combined with other factors) looks quite plausible.