Are you a woman who loves to keep herself in perfect shape and believes sports bras are the perfect solution to prevent breast sagging? Do you feel a loose-fitting bra is even worse than not wearing a bra at all? Do you also feel the larger your breasts are, the more uncomfortable they can be during exercise?
These are many questions women ponder regarding their breasts and exercise in trying to find the ideal solution. But the solution might come down to less is more and better for your breasts.
Women's breasts contain some internal structures that offer support, contrary to what most women think. The motion and impact caused by exercising can result in your breasts bouncing around, which is about it; it will not cause sagging on its own if your breasts bounce around while you exercise.
The sports bra is sold and marketed to prevent your breasts from bouncing while you exercise and to prevent sagging. It's supposedly designed to hold your breasts up tight against your chest and prevents them from moving around. It may be a solution to prevent the breasts from moving around uncontrollably, but it may not offer what you expect to prevent the sagging of the breasts.
Can a sports bra prevent your breasts from sagging?
First, we should understand how the breasts are structured and held into place; it won't matter if you use a sports bra. The breasts contain structures called Cooper's Ligaments which support the breasts on your chest and keep them in place. These ligaments are designed to stretch and be elastic, more so than muscles.
The ligaments suspend the breast from the clavicle and the underlying deep fascia of the upper chest. These ligaments support the breast in its normal position, how you see them, and maintain its normal shape and appearance. Without the internal support of these ligaments, the breasts and breast tissue (heavier than the surrounding fat) sag under their weight, losing their normal shape and contour and would go down to your belly button.
Does wearing a sports bra offer any support and prevention for breast sagging?
No, nothing at all, the only benefit of wearing a sports bra is to look nice in your gym attire. During sports and exercise, your breasts will be held in place while jogging, jumping, or playing sports. That is about all it offers, for looks and to hold in place and reduce bounce.
Sports bras will do nothing to prevent sagging, breasts sagging is bound by genetics, the size of your breasts, and aging. When a person ages, the supporting structures of the breasts, such as the Coopers' Ligaments, will gradually deteriorate over time, and breasts will sag as you age. How fast they sag will be determined by other factors and whether you wear or not wear a bra.
Do sports bras speed up the sagging process?
Breast structures, including the elastic Cooper Ligaments, work best under an ideal and natural environment to keep them healthy. If you start housing or enclosing your breasts with a sports bra all day, it will do more harm than good. Keeping your breasts tight against your body will weaken the structures of the breasts. Your Cooper ligaments will deteriorate faster since they are not in use.
Consequently, over time, your breasts will sag faster than a woman who has never worn a bra in her lifetime. Just think of it this way, a doctor will place it in a cast for six weeks when you have a fracture on your arm. After six weeks, you go to the doctor's office to have the cast removed. You look at your arm, which has been immobile for six weeks. It looks skinny, weak, and half the size of your other arm. The bone healed, but the muscle tissues and ligaments must heal afterward.
You can imagine something like that happens to your breasts, but the cast is replaced by a bra used for years over your lifetime, not six weeks like a cast. You place your breasts in this tight fabric, holding them close to your body to keep them from moving. At the same time, you are weakening and damaging the ligaments, muscles, and skin tissues over time. Once the ligaments are weakened, they lose their elasticity, and a weakened ligament never returns the same.
The result is that your breasts will start sagging faster at a younger age than a woman who does not wear a bra. Wearing a sports bra or bra has consequences and is something we all must consider. A sports bra is a fashion clothing item, but not a solution to prevent breast sagging. On the contrary, it will speed up the sagging of your breasts.
What about exercising and the impact on my breasts?
When you exercise, your breasts are better off being unsupported. Your breasts can bounce around and jiggle and still have the support and elasticity offered by the Coopers' Ligaments. They will go back to their shape and hold the breast in their place. The elasticity of the ligaments will work fine for many years with exercise and having your breasts bouncing around.
The only way to truly damage the elasticity of the ligaments in the breasts is to immobilize them as a sports bra does. And some women wear sports bras all day and even all night, speeding up the damage to the ligaments.
So what is the purpose of a sports bra?
Sports bras are nothing more than an article of clothing sold with the idea that they will help women. Big marketing dollars go into the retail of these articles of clothing. In the fashion sense, they look nice, but they offer no health benefits; rather, they speed up the deterioration of the breast.
Just ask yourself, do you need a sports bra? Are you shy about having your breasts bouncing around? Will it help me improve my breast health?
Just think of a sports bra as nothing more than a fashion piece. It will not prevent, reverse or improve your breast sagging. It does the opposite; it speeds up the process of breast sagging. There is no reason to be shy by having your breasts bouncing. The ligaments that hold the breasts were designed to be elastic and return to their normal position, keeping your breasts in place. And who cares if someone notices your breasts bouncing everywhere? Everything bounces on our bodies, don't be shy, do your exercise, and feel good about yourself and your body.
