Tight Clothing’s Link To Health Problems

What if everything you thought you knew about bras and breast cancer turned out to be wrong? Can you question your long-held assumptions and personal habits, but more importantly, make necessary lifestyle corrections that will protect and improve your health? Is putting your ‘chest eggs in a tight nest,’ as breasts in bras are sometimes equated, really necessary or even healthy?

These are the kinds of questions that Dr. Elizabeth R. Vaughan began asking herself and her patients over a decade ago. Her background and upbringing isn’t that of someone who might ordinarily be expected to become a maverick health care provider, much less one who challenges conventional health wisdom with passionate conviction. She’s the daughter of two physicians, a descendant of four generations of physicians, whose great-grandfather was president of the American Medical Association. But her provocative outside-the-mainstream ideas about bras, toxins, and breast cancer prompted USA Today to call her “the Erin Brockovich of medicine.” You might recall Erin Brockovich as the legal crusader who defied conventional wisdom and exposed the toxic contamination of an entire town, and whose story was later told in a movie starring Julia Roberts.

What Dr. Vaughan, CEO of Vaughan Medical Center in Greensboro, N.C., began to notice was a relationship between the development of breast lumps/cysts and the wearing of  bras. She personally treated more than 100 women who, in her words, “chose to go bra free after yet another biopsy of a lump in their breasts or aspiration of a cyst. Over 3-6 months, their breast cysts/lumps got smaller and less tender and they developed no new lumps that we could detect.” Dr. Vaughan’s observation has since been demonstrated in practice by other health care providers.

Breast cysts may be one of the flashing red warning signs for the onset of breast cancer. A 1999 study in the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, examined 1,374 women with breast cysts and tracked them based on their incidence of breast cancer. It was found that premenopausal women with breast cysts had a nearly 6-fold increased risk of breast cancer compared to women who didn’t have breast cysts. Here is how the authors of this study succinctly summarized their findings: “Women with breast cysts are at an increased risk of breast cancer.”

That shouldn’t come as a surprise given that most women wear bras which are much too tight for them and have worn them this way since they received their first ‘training bra’ as a young girl. According to The Johns Hopkins University Breast Center, “as many as 80 percent of women are actually wearing a bra that is the wrong size for them,” a chronic condition that can produce health problems, particularly in the backs of women with large breasts.

With a connection possibly established between breast cysts and breast cancer, along with Dr. Vaughan’s findings that bras cause or exacerbate the development of breast cysts, you don’t need to be the Sherlock Holmes of common sense to grasp that bras, lymphatic drainage impairment, breast cysts, and breast cancer may be linked, much like a chain reaction automobile wreck.

A key circumstantial piece of evidence showing a link between bras and breast cancer emerged in 1991 from a study of breast size and breast cancer risk by researchers in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. Published in the European Journal of Cancer, this survey of thousands of women found that, “Premenopausal women who do not wear bras had half the risk of breast cancer compared to bra users.”

The study authors speculated this could be because these premenopausal women are “thinner and likely to have smaller breasts.” But that observation received little or no support from subsequent medical studies. As the director of The Johns Hopkins University Breast Center declared in 2007: “Simply having breasts and being female places all women at risk. Women with size 32AA bras get breast cancer just like someone with 46DDs.”

This Harvard study finding about bra usage and a higher risk for breast cancer should have set off alarm bells within the health field and the clothing industry. At the very least, it should have spawned a spate of new studies exploring this connection between bra use and breast cancer. But it caused barely a ripple in public health awareness. Once again, as in the Emperor’s New Clothes, reflexive rejection and obstinate denial had triumphed over reality and common sense.

New Options for Breast Health

At Hippocrates Wellness our line of organic bras are made with luxuriously soft organic cotton that is free of of chemicals, heavy metals, bleach, and harmful dyes to ensure they are as PURE FOR YOUR SKIN as possible. Our elastic free design is great for women with latex sensitivities and elastic irritations. The bras are underwire free for all-day comfort and better breast health. Specially designed to promote lymph flow throughout the body and ergonomically designed to support the body’s anatomy for overall health. The breathable organic fibers help to regulate your body temperature and allow the skin to eliminate toxins naturally which is important in preventing inflammation and stagnancy in the body.

We offer several styles to choose from, including designs for every day wear, sportswear, as well as maternity and mastectomy wear. In addition to these current styles, we will continue to expand our line with new and attractive designs for every women’s physique.

To order or to learn more about our organic bras, go here or call our Hippocrates store at: 877-582-5850 (in the USA) or 561-623-1019

To stay up-to-date with our latest offerings, follow our “Ohganix” organic apparel brand online @Ohganix.