New Study Links Bra Use and Cancer
A new study shows that wearing a bra is linked to higher incidence of breast cancer . Women who wear a bra 24 hours a day are 125 times a likely to develop cancer as women who don¹t wear one at all, according to medical anthropologists Sydney Ross Singer and Soma Grismaijer.
In a study involving 4,700 women, those who never wore a bra had the same incidence of breast cancer as men a rare condition. Women who wore bras for more than 12 hours but did not sleep in them had 21 times the risk as women who wore a bra for less than 12 hours.
It is postulated that lymphatic vessels are blocked by the bra, keeping lymphocytes (white blood cells) from their role in destroying abnormal cells, and leading to malignancies. However, even without knowing the exact mechanism, the correlation is significant: 4 to 12 times as great as the connection between smoking and lung cancer .
This theory was originally raised a few years back by Sydney Ross Singer, in the book Dressed to Kill, and was laughed at by the medical establishment but is now getting a second, more serious look.