by, for, and about women in science, technology, engineering, & math

About four years ago, I took a health quiz online. It advertised that it could determine your risk of certain kinds of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. I was obsessed with quizzes back then, and I still find them kind of fun, however I no longer take them as seriously as I did as a first year in college. I don’t remember many of the questions (although I’m pretty sure several of them would ring alarm bells if I found this quiz today), but one of them stands out. It made me change part of my lifestyle. And, it turns out, there was probably no need for me to do so.

At the time, I was wearing supportive undershirts to bed. I don’t mean a tank top with that second layer of fabric that they claim adds extra support. I mean an undershirt with an underwire bra built in. And so when the test asked me how often I wore a bra, I pretty much said all day, every day. The test subsequently informed me that because of this, my risk of breast cancer was quite high. I stopped wearing the undershirts, and never really thought about it again.

Well, until just now, when I read this article in the NY Times. If you had asked me yesterday what the mechanism for bras causing breast cancer was, I would not have been able to tell you. If you had asked how we knew that wearing a bra caused breast cancer, I would have said there were probably studies showing a correlation. So when this article indicated that the suspected cancer causing mechanism was “prevent[ing] elimination of toxins by blocking lymph flow,” I felt cheated. The word toxins is often used in the course of promoting questionable health claims. I would have wondered more about this conclusion had I realized that this was the proposed mechanism. I was even more dismayed to learn that, in fact, no study has been published showing that wearing a bra causes cancer. Instead, it appears that two anthropologists did a questionable study purporting to show this. It was never published in a journal, but nevertheless spread through media and, especially, the internet. They also wrote a book about their findings. Check out their website below and ask yourself:

• What is “do-it-on-yourself research”?
• Why was this study never published?
• Are their books scientifically valid sources of information?
• What qualifications do the authors have?

Like I said before, for me it was only one lifestyle choice. I did not stop wearing a bra entirely; I figured I just had to lessen the amount of time I wore a bra, which is, in fact, what the myth states that you should do. Now it looks like I didn’t need to change anything. This is disappointing since it had taken a long time to find those undershirts and I had spent a lot of money on them. I no longer have them (they could hardly have lasted this long anyway), but I wonder if I would have bought more otherwise. They were quite comfortable.

While wearing a bra is a personal choice, it is a choice that should not be influenced by the fear of cancer. Be comfortable. :)

Some Links

The American Cancer Society’s Statement

Webpage by the authors of the unpublished study referenced above

NY Times Article