Whether you choose to sleep in a bra or not, you've probably heard rumours around why it is or isn't good for you.
While many women choose to keep their bra on at night with the hope of keeping their breasts pert, others may have been put off by reports suggesting it is harmful to health.
The first scare story emerged in 1995, when authors of the book Dressed to Killclaimed that women who wore tight-fitting bras every day had a higher risk of developing breast cancer than those who didn't.
As Shape magazine reports, "The authors said that by constricting the lymphatic system - which eliminates toxins from your body - bras trap toxins in the breast tissue and cause breast cancer."
Yet there is no evidence to suggest this is true.
In 2012, Amber Guth, associate professor of surgery and director of the Breast Cancer Surgery Multidisciplinary Fellowship at NYU Langone Medical Center, spoke to Huffington Post Style about the issue.
"There is certainly no evidence that sleeping in bras is either helpful or harmful," Guth said.
"Either your breasts are being supported for eight hours, or they're not being supported for eight hours," Guth added. "What do you think is better? It's just common sense. If your breasts are being held up, they're going to stay up a lot longer. When you take your bra off at the end of the day, they're a lot higher than when you put it on in the morning."
Research published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention also found "no association between bra wearing and increased breast cancer risk among postmenopausal women."
Lu Chen, a researcher in the Public Health Sciences Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in the US said, "Our study found no evidence that wearing a bra increases a woman's risk for breast cancer. The risk was similar no matter how many hours per day women wore a bra, whether they wore a bra with an underwire, or at what age they first began wearing a bra."
The only real no-no? Avoid wearing a bra that's too tight or a design that might cause irritation to the chest area. After all, you want to stay comfortable during your precious shut-eye.
Source: Huffington Post
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