Great news for the cancer field!
Researchers are now looking beyond the tumor, into the tumor microenvironment, to better understand more fully what is actually happening when cancers develop1.
This relatively new approach does not just look at cancer as a cellular mutation that causes cells to grow without stopping. The cancer paradigm is shifting to seeing cancer as a process involving a host of cells and chemical factors operating within a tissue structure, or matrix.
This is good news because it expands the understanding of how cancers develop. It also shows a glaring problem with the current cancer approach.
Since the medical paradigm is a biochemical one, the goal has been to describe the biochemistry of the tumor microenvironment, with the hope of discovering a drug to interfere with the biochemistry of cancer. Interventions that are not drug oriented are not actively pursued, or sometimes even addressed.
When it comes to the tumor microenvironment, this non-drug factor is the impact of wearing tight clothing.
Tight Clothing Impacts the Extracellular Matrix
What is the impact of tight clothing on the extracellular matrix and tumor microenvironment?
Tight clothing can reduce lymphatic flow2, impair the extracellular matrix3, and create low tissue oxygen, reduced intercellular communication, impaired immune function, and, consequently, increased cancer incidence.
Unfortunately, the drug model of medicine ignores clothing and the mechanical impact of tight clothing on the body’s circulation, including on the lymphatic system and extracellular matrix, which are easily affected by tight clothing.
This is particularly important when addressing breast cancer. Most women wear bras these days, and wear them too tightly, according to the lingerie industry. Marks and indentations left in the skin by bras are a sign of constriction. This means the extracellular matrix of the breast tissue is being altered in its function by tight bras.
Research has shown that impairing the extracellular matrix increases cancer incidence4. Bras interfere with this matrix. Numerous studies have now shown a significant bra-cancer link5.
The bottom line is that wearing tight garments, especially bras, can alter the microenvironment within the tissue, impacting the tissue’s local immune function and response to cancer development.
Clearly, it’s time to expand the understanding of the tumor microenvironment to include the impacts of tight clothing. Breast cancer cannot be adequately studied without considering the use of tight bras, including the degree of tightness and length of time worn daily.
Unfortunately, the bra-cancer link has been considered controversial. The theory behind the link has suggested that tight bras impair lymphatic function, resulting in fluid and toxin accumulation and reduced immune function. This theory has been dismissed out-of-hand by those who have been defining the cancer paradigm along pharmaceutical lines6.
Ignoring the impact of tight bras on the breasts is like ignoring the impact of smoking on the lungs, or tight shoes on the feet. Cultural pressures and financial interests may benefit from this ignorance, but women do not.
It’s time to expand the paradigm. Just as you cannot understand a breast tumor without understanding its microenvironment, you cannot understand the tumor microenvironment without understanding the woman’s macroenvironment, which is her culture. And culture these days expects women to wear bras for long hours everyday, from puberty onwards, although that is changing7.
Racial Disparity Explained
Once the issue of tight clothing is included in the analysis of the tumor microenvironment, another interesting connection can be made. Women of color are known to have increased death rate from breast cancer. While some sociocultural and comorbidity factors can explain some of this disparity, it does not explain all of it. However, we can now see another factor involved.
Women of color have increased scarring, such as keloid scars, in response to trauma and healing. This scarring increases the density of the extracellular matrix, with increased deposits of collagen. This increases resistance to lymphatic flow, resulting in more profound impairment of the immune system and tissue microenvironment than in white women who wear bras, and who have less scar formation from trauma and irritation from tight clothing8.
This would translate into worse cancer outcomes for people with greater scar formation.
Any garment that leaves marks or dents in the skin is too tight. The reason why tight clothing is harmful is because of its impact on circulation.
Lymphatic circulation, which is central to immune function, must be unobstructed, and lymphatic vessels are easily affected by compression and constriction. All this helps define the extracellular matrix and tumor microenvironment.
Given the culture’s penchant for tight fashions, the most common cause of lymphatic impairment is tight clothing, especially bras. Add to that the synthetic materials comprising most tight clothing, which can leach toxic chemicals into the skin, and you have a culture-caused recipe for cancer.
Clearly, clothing that is tight and toxic will not only affect the tumor microenvironment; it may even help create it.
Barrier to Drug Therapy
Lymphatic impairment and extracellular matrix congestion from tight clothing can complicate drug therapy, and limit healing ability. The reduction in circulation from tight clothing will also impact drug delivery to the tissues, and increase the effective drug half-life in the tissue by keeping it there longer.
Poor lymphatic circulation essentially blockades an area, limiting input and outflow of fluid and the biochemical products it carries, including therapeutic drugs. If the tissues don’t properly circulate, they deteriorate. This is why chronic inflammation is harmful. It causes chronic circulatory impairment.
Good circulation is important for preventing cancer and for treating it. Circulate, or deteriorate.
Conclusion
It’s time the research and medical establishments start to recognize that you cannot understand the microenvironment of the body without considering the cultural macroenvironment in which that body lives.
Tight clothing alters the body through constant pressure. This affects circulation to and from the affected area.
Bras are an example of this process. Most women wear bras tightly for long hours daily, and this results in chronic lymphedema and associated degenerative processes, including increased cancer incidence and reduced cancer survival.
Fortunately, tight clothing is a disease-causing factor that can be easily altered. Fashions can become more body-friendly. Research into disease, including cancer and the tumor microenvironment, can begin to incorporate this overlooked lifestyle factor of clothing tightness and toxicity into study design and treatment protocols.
We need to see people as more than biochemical processes. We are also cultural beings, who use culture to alter our bodies. We cannot ignore this when studying human health and disease.
- 1. The tumor microenvironment
↩︎ - 2. How Bras Cause Lymph Stasis and Breast Cancer
↩︎ - 3. How Bras Cause Breast Cancer by Impairing the Extracellular Matrix
↩︎ - 4. The extracellular matrix and the immune system: A mutually dependent relationship
↩︎ - 5. See https://www.BrasAndBreastCancer.org/supportive-studies
↩︎ - 6. What Breast Cancer Inc. Doesn’t Want You to Know About Bras
↩︎ - 7. Bra-Free at Work: ending sexist and illegal dress codes
↩︎ - 8. A New Theory for the Cause of Racial Disparity in Breast Cancer Death Rates
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