Do Underwire Bras Increase My Risk for Breast Cancer?

— -- Question: Do underwire bras increase my risk for breast cancer?

Answer: I do not believe that underwire bras increase the risk of breast cancer. There are many studies that are reported that try to associate things that we have in our lifestyle -- our habits -- that might influence cancer risk. But one has to remember that we all have very complex lifestyles in western society and to sort out one item or another, such as an underwire bra, would be a terribly difficult task to associate, and especially since most people would expect that it would have to be use over a long period of time, not a short period of time, that would be correlated. So, consequently, you might expect that breast cancer risk would have gone down in the 1960s when braless-ness was in fact in vogue, and in fact that's not what we saw in the statistics. So it's hard to associate many of these lifestyle factors with cancer risk per se, although lifestyle factors are one of the things that we can modify personally.

Next: Does Smoking Increase My Risk for Breast Cancer?

Previous: Does An Injury to the Breast Increase Breast Cancer Risk?