Dressed to Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras. - book reviews

Nutrition Health Review, Summer, 1995

Can the brassiere, so much a part of feminine fashion, actually be hazardous to a woman's health? In fact, does the habit of wearing a bra, especially when tight and poorly designed, contribute to the development breast cancer?

The premise is simple: wearing bras, especially those that are tight-fitting, can distort human flesh. Breast tissue, dependent upon drainage of toxins and other noxious stimuli by the lymph glands of the breast, is subject to cancerous degeneration when the elimination process is hampered.

"Bras may be a health problem even in the absence of cancer causing toxins," the authors write. "The appearance of so many lymph-filled breasts is possible evidence of this hazard."

The writers of Dressed to Kill are trained medical anthropologists in a specialty of research that studies customs of dress with relation to a particular society's health problems. Of relevance to such diseases as breast cancer, medical anthropologists study lifestyles - and lifestyles, as the book contends, are responsible for illnesses and deaths.

Heart disease is one example in which cultural factors are implicated. It is produced by certain lifestyles, particularly those bearing_high degrees of stress, poor diet, and too little physical activity.

Applying the principles of medical anthropology to breast cancer, the authors admit, is especially complex. It involves biological, environmental, and cultural factors. Seldom has a potentially fatal disease been linked to an article of clothing.

The search for the cause of breast cancer is a frustrating one. Despite the huge sums money spent on research, nothing significant has yet been discovered. Does a diet high in animal fat contribute to breast cancer development? Some scientists are convinced diet and lifestyle play a part. But breast cancer may be caused by more than a single factor. The book relates the results of a study that should command attention. Its implications soar beyond only breast cancer. What is it about the culture and lifestyles of a nation that makes breast cancer a major disease?

"Bras are so accepted by modern Western societies that questioning their impact on the health of breast tissue sounds ludicrous," the writers admit. Four years ago they embarked on a study of breast cancer that yielded statistics beyond their expectations.

As cultural anthropologists, the researchers encountered populations in which health problems were often linked to the wearing of tight shoes. "Feet were not designed for enclosure in an airless, snug, stiff case," they observed. Lack of air circulation and perspiration leads to fungal infections. Forcing the foot to conform to the shape of a shoe may produce corns, calluses, distorted feet, and poor circulation. Women who wear shoes with narrow toes and high heels throw their entire bodies off balance, resulting in back problems and hip troubles. Fashion can be deforming.

Constriction by undergarments has been a burden for women in other eras also. Corsets, popular from the seventeenth century until recently, squeezed women to the point of serious internal damage and deformity.

"The corset did to the female body what tight shoes. do to the feet," they write. "But the body cavity is filled with soft organs, not just muscles, tendons, and bone, as are the feet. Consequently, the pressure on the body causes circulatory problems, breathing difficulty, and lower back distortion, as well as health problems."

In 1986, an article in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases (M. Desilva) noted that obese, heavy-breasted, middle-aged or elderly women were experiencing neck, shoulder, and arm pain as a direct result of compression on their shoulders by narrow brassiere straps, with the compression leading to impairment of the nerves going down the arms to the hands.

In some women, the researchers observed, permanent grooves developed in their shoulders.

The book reports further studies that confirm apprehensions of cultural anthropologists in which disorders of the body can be affected by fashion and custom. In a 1980 article, German researchers published observations appearing in Annals of Plastic Surgery, noting that bra straps worn by large-breasted women caused neurological damage, including tingling and nerve trouble of the fingers.

More testimony to the deleterious effects of wearing tight bras on women who attempted to breast-feed is quoted in a 1980 article appearing in Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology (N. K. Kochenour): tight bras have been shown to interfere with the mother's ability to produce milk.

Human breasts have developed over hundreds of thousands of years without restraint. It has been biologically impossible to adapt to bras healthfully in the short time since their invention. The authors consequently pose the questions: If nature desired breasts to be formed other than naturally, wouldn't nature have done so?

That toxins form in normal breasts is not a medical mystery, although little publicity has been given to the subject. How the body disposes of the poisons is crucial to the question of whether wearing a bra contributes to breast cancer. The book postulates that breast tissue is assaulted randomly by various toxins, but - more than other tissues of the body - the breast is prevented from cleansing itself of these substances.