The Food Medic - S5 E6: Breast Biomechanics And Finding The Right Sports Bra

Episode Date: February 8, 2021

Welcome back to another episode of The Food Medic Podcast. This week we are discussing breast health in sports and exercise, and how to find the right sports bra. Dr Hazel is joined by Dr Jenny Burbage, Associate Head in the School of Sport, Health & Exercise Science at the University of Portsmouth. Her primary research area is breast biomechanics and breast health, with interests in breast pain, poor bra fit, functional breast support and the effect of breast support on performance; her PhD was focused on investigating breast support implications for female recreational athletes. Topics covered include:* Research Group in Breast Health at the University of Portsmouth.* The evolution of the sports bra* The importance of adequate breast sport in sports and exercise* The impact of poor breast support on performance* High, medium and low impact definitions (or lack thereof)* Step by step guide to finding the right sports bra * Sports bras in pregnancy + breastfeeding* Breast knowledge and awareness for school age girls If you loved this episode make sure to give it a review, rating (hopefully 5 stars) and share it with your friends and family. @thefoodmedic/www.thefoodmedic.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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it all over your eye area, including the lids. Thank you to Murad for supporting the Food Medic podcast. Today we are discussing breast health in sports and exercise, which is a topic that I'm personally fascinated by and always banging on about. Did you know that the first sports bra was made, homemade actually, in 1977 out of two jock straps sewn together? Thankfully we have come a long way since the jock bra but we are really only starting to appreciate how important adequate breast support is when exercising. So today I'm very lucky to be joined by Dr. Jenny Burbage, who is the Associate Head in School of Sport, Health and Exercise Science at the University of Portsmouth. Her primary research area is breast biomechanics and breast health, with interests in breast pain, poor bra

fit, functional breast support, and the effect of breast support on performance. Her PhD was focused on investigating breast support implications for female recreational athletes. Dr. Burbage has worked with a number of national and international parallel companies and bra manufacturers since 2007. Over the last seven years she's been running breast science workshops for the industry. Jenny has published over 20 peer-reviewed papers and presented at numerous national and international conferences. Again, this podcast has a female focus, but it is intended for everyone to listen to. And so while these conversations may start here, I'm hoping you guys will continue them with your friends, family and colleagues. So take notes and enjoy. First of all, thank you so much for joining us on the Food Medic podcast.

The first thing I would love to know a bit more about is your research background and the work you're doing with the research group in breast health at the University of Portsmouth. Yes so I have a undergraduate degree in sport and exercise science so that's really my background and then from a sport science degree I was really interested in how the body moves so I went on to do a master's degree and specifically in biomechanics for sport and exercise so that was trying to understand a bit more about how we can measure how the body moves and look at the forces for instance that we apply to the ground and how that might help us to try and improve performance within sport or to reduce the risk of injury and it was whilst I was doing that that I had the opportunity to become a research assistant on the first ever project into sports bras and sports bra support at the University of Portsmouth and this was a fascinating

area and I realized that when I started looking into this how little research had been undertaken in this area so I basically didn't look back from that point and from my master's kind of carried on working as a research assistant collecting some some initial data looking at how the breast moves during activity and how sports bras might help to reduce that movement and then I effectively went on to do a PhD part-time looking at the breast support implications for female recreational athletes and I've continued from there really interested in sports bras how they affect women whilst they're exercising and then I specifically more recently gone into looking at more functional breast support during occupational activities so I'm currently working with the military for example to understand how we might help them to achieve good breast support for their female

recruits. I've also been looking into horse riding as a specific sport and what we might be able to do there. So really interesting research and still so much to do in this area. Yeah, absolutely. And I can't wait to talk more about that research. Because like you said, it is, you know, there's still a lot more to do. And sports bras are relatively new. And I think the first one was essentially homemade back in the 1970s. And how have sports bras evolved since? You know, how much do we know now? And why did it take so long?

It did take a long time. It's really surprising to think that the first sports bra was only really sort of around in the late 70s and I think a lot of focus went into developing athletic shoes and footwear and trainers and that's where a lot of from a biomechanics perspective I think that's where a lot of the research went and we just didn't really start looking at the science behind bras for another decade you know sort of later so there's a couple of early studies you know some brief research done one in the 80s one early 90s and it wasn't really until we got into the 2000s that the scientific research you know sort of

arena caught up and started really having an impact and and really trying to help to inform the design of the bra product so you know there's certainly developments since the initial bras in terms of fabric technology and designs and I think you know generally we're still kind of basing a lot of these these kind of sports bras on three main styles and I think that hasn't necessarily changed what's changed is kind of the addition of different adjustability uh different ways we can do up the bra and undo the bra and and different materials and the whole time we've got this compromise between providing good support to the breast through the sports bra but also for that bra to be comfortable as well so it's still very challenging and I've heard that the bras have evolved but I still think we have some

way to to go to to still be able to meet the needs of female athletes who who are wearing them. Yeah absolutely and I think there's also the barrier kind of for more recreational athletes or people who are just generally taking part in exercise who are also looking for something that's like aesthetically pleasing. And sometimes that trumps the other factors, which is why I'd love to kind of, you know, chat more about why it's so important that we do as women have adequate breast support when we are exercising because the breasts don't just move up and down and it's not just women who have you know larger cup sizes it's all breasts moving in some way shape or form absolutely and you're right to sort of highlight that that sometimes the uh the impression is maybe that you have to be of a certain size in order to have the need to wear a sports bra. However, you know, we've not found that to be the case in our research. We found that wearing a highly supportive bra product can really reduce breast discomfort and breast movement right from an a cup onwards so we are seeing significant improvements in that kind of comfort and and support in all sizes and unfortunately you know

especially for for women who maybe are just doing the odd bit of exercise for example and you know they want something that looks good they're going to the gym and that's great. But, you know, we have to think about from a health perspective as well, what it might mean, you know, sort of not being supported. And the breast itself has very limited internal support structures. It's a very unique tissue. It's a soft tissue. And we found that without having appropriate breast support it can lead to breast pain but it can also be a barrier to exercise so this stops women from exercising more which is it's so crucial that we do all exercise more and you know if we can find a good supporting bra that you're

sort of happy with that might help more women to to exercise but it also might lead to to sort of damage as well to the skin which is one of the main supporting structures of the breast by that i mean that we've seen some evidence that you know with excessive sort of breast movement it can lead to stretching of that skin over the point where we would sort of expect it to be and therefore that kind of leads to a little bit of damage to to that skin over the point where we would sort of expect it to be and therefore that kind of leads to a little bit of damage to to that skin which is proposed to lead to potentially sort of breast sagging sort of earlier than it would do anyway I mean with age unfortunately women's breasts and the skin over the breast will deteriorate and the elasticity properties change so we will end up unfortunately

sort of sagging anyway however you know by repeatedly not having a good breast support might lead to that process being earlier. Absolutely and kind of breast pain and the barriers to exercise are obviously really important factors but can poor breast support also impede performance so more so looking at athletes and things like that? Yes definitely there have been some really interesting preliminary studies showing that poor breast support can lead to changes which are sort of both biomechanical and physiological so so what i mean by that as there's some examples is that we've seen that poor breast support can lead to an increase in the amount of muscle activity for example that's happening in the upper body we've also seen it lead to a shorter stride length so if you imagine if if someone is wearing a really

sort of poorly supporting bra then they might not be striding out as far as they could do if they were sort of confident and well supported so if you extrapolate that over a longer distance so sort of five kilometers for example or longer then that might then start affecting the performance in terms of their speed and the time that it takes them to undertake that distance. And we've even seen changes to breathing frequency, for example. So we think that due to the kind of discomfort of having breasts that are moving too much, we see this sort of breath holding technique. So, you know, women sort of holding their breath a bit more because it is uncomfortable than from a physiological uh impact and this is right from

uh some evidence to suggest that breast support and breast kind of health issues are affecting both recreational but also elite athletes as well and they're suggesting that there might be some changes um to their performance by not having an appropriate bra. Yeah and it makes sense kind of based on the factors that you mentioned you know increased muscle activation because you you're going to go into a protective mechanism whether you're thinking about it consciously or not and I think we can all relate to that ourselves when when we're out running or doing different forms of exercise. And so for recreational athletes or for anyone really, when you go out shopping for sports bras,

typically they're labelled high, medium and low impact, kind of based on what activity you're doing. But how scientifically informed are those labels? And are all sports bras rigorously tested before they're categorised into those labels? Or is it just based on the brand's interpretation? Yeah, that's a really good question. Unfortunately, any bra on the market can be labelled as a sports bra. There's no current regulation, of regulation i suppose or a particular stamp of approval that a bra would need to reach in order to be termed a sports bra so that that

in itself can lead to issues because you can get all parts of the uh the sort of sports bra market they're advertising products and even though with the high medium and low impact labels they don't have to go through any kind of independent review so you know you see companies that do testing in house and they will make that decision in terms of high medium and low we actually run an independent test house effectively at the University of Portsmouth, where we do work with many major apparel companies and test their products. And by doing that, we've built up a large database and a lot of information about different products. And therefore, we feel that we can give some quite independent uh good advice i suppose in terms of what we consider to be low high or medium when you when you look across the bras as a whole however as i

say that's not something companies have to do uh so i think if you're out and you're shopping for sort of bras just you know have a read through the information you know have they been tested you know either in-house or by an independent you know sort of body and and try and yeah kind of pick pick through that information I mean really I think it's quite a individual thing and you know whether you're doing a high low or medium activity you really need to get that bra and and look at it in terms of is it appropriate for the activity that you're doing and hopefully do a little bit of is it appropriate for the activity that you're doing and hopefully do a lift a bit of jumping around in the changing room before you decide to buy it yeah absolutely

I think that's you know mind-blowing I never really considered that that there's no real kind of definition for sports bra and so any bra that goes on the market could technically label itself a sports bra and which I guess is I guess opens itself up to a whole load of problems. It does, unfortunately. I think as a research group, this is something that we want to be able to tackle in the future because we feel quite strongly that there should be some kind of kite mark or something that the product has to go through in order to kind of gain that term because we just think it can be quite misleading for consumers not understanding

necessarily the quality of that product yeah absolutely and so can we do a walk through step-by-step guide to finding the right sports bra what are the apart from considering the different levels of impact what else should we be considering like the material or the strap placement the underband what are some kind of headline things to run through in your head yeah so from a headline perspective I think the two key things to consider at the outset is the size of the breast and what mode of activity that you're looking for this bra to support you doing. So size and the type of activity are the biggest factors in terms of which sports bra is going to be the most appropriate. We find that as breast size increases, you do need an increased level of support and potentially a different type of support so I mentioned earlier about having these sort of three main types of sports bras as such

and we have compression sports bras which are like the crop tops style which are quite often sized as small medium and large and compressed abreast they're good for smaller breasted women however as size increases we find them becoming less effective and then you might want to consider more of an encapsulation style which is more like a an everyday sort of bra with added features so it supports each of the breasts individually within each of the cups and then it generally has wider shoulder straps sort of padding and see more support and then you can get combination sports bars which effectively combine a couple of those elements and and say it does depend on what kind of activity you're

doing and the size of your breast as to which sports bar might be more appropriate for you so I think if you know do try it on before buying if you can or if you're buying online do this at home and send back if it's not appropriate but we know that for example just doing five jumping jacks so little star jumps in the changing room that really gives a good indication of can it deal with a really high demanding sort of activity where we see a lot of breast movement so if you're doing something quite high impact like running for example then by doing these sort of these jumps in the changing room and looking in the mirror see whether you're comfortable with you with the level of movement that is what you can see and feel yeah and when you mention kind of smaller breasted

women in terms of cup size would it be a to c kind of for the more compression types of bras and then encapsulation d and above yeah generally i think generally that's where we would we would place that line i i guess it's difficult to because that's only taking into account cup size and not band size and obviously that they're interrelated but as a baseline we would say the sort of compression sports bars are more suited for this sort of a and b cups and maybe some c cups as well but then if you start going above that that's where you know you need to see a bit more adjustability maybe different types of material different styles and it's you know there are lots of options out there and that's good because you know everyone's

got their own preferences I would really say look out for ideally having adjustability in that bra so shoulder straps in particular because if you think about it you know we might have a woman who's five foot tall and a woman who's six foot three and they might be the same breast volume so looking at buying the same bra and if you think about the shoulder straps if you didn't have adjustability how much more tension there would be for the taller women compared to the shorter women for example so you know having that adjustability to be able to make sure that you've got you know the straps there that are that are firm um and making sure the underband fits well for example you know fit is a real key thing here we can't get away from

that when we're talking about you know a guide to finding the right sports bra it really needs to fit yeah absolutely and actually like before a conversation I went through um I've got like quite a collection of sports bras but just going through which ones do have you know adjustable straps and you know even an underband that's not you know completely constricting and and there is some flexibility in it and it was interesting to see that some some really really great brands that I rate don't meet that criteria and it's almost the ones that are like I mentioned earlier less kind of fashionable that seem to be the the best in terms of the greatest amount of support the ones that

I would pick up when I'm going for a run for example and so yeah it definitely is interesting that a lot of these factors aren't always considered when it comes to making a good sports bra that you'd find on the high street. Yeah and it's such a trade-off as you mentioned there between what the bra looks like, how much it supports, how much it costs for example and it's very difficult to get a bra that ticks all of those boxes. So I think we do need to make a decision as to what is most important, I suppose, and what we value the most. And, you know, if you're really looking to get a highly supportive sports bra,

you know, for a high impact activity then you know look for bras for example that have a higher neckline because we know that a higher neckline can help to reduce the amount that the breasts move up and down so that's really important we also actually some recent research has shown that having a even just some light padding in the in the bra can be helpful and can help to improve support the shoulder straps definitely you know say adjustable but also sort of wider and having some padding as well can can really help in terms of comfort and support so you know there are some good products out there but unfortunately there's so many of them that you do need to kind of have some idea as to to what might might work yeah absolutely and then also just thinking about um pregnancy

and breastfeeding because I know that I've been approached by quite a few women who've fallen who are either pregnant or breastfeeding and they're asking about the best sports bras for them but I don't think there's any research into sports bras specifically looking at pregnant or breastfeeding women is there? No unfortunately from looking at specific bras for pregnancy and looking at you know how effective they are and what kind of styles work that research just hasn't been done on those pregnant women and i think that's not very far away but i imagine it's been due to kind of some of the ethical issues around asking pregnant women to come into laboratories and to to run on treadmills for example and to do that kind of rigorous testing uh generally

we do our testing we have to exclude anyone who's pregnant or who has been pregnant in the last year or is currently breastfeeding for example so you know this is a very much a niche area which I think is definitely needed but it also needs to be some some funding there as well to be able to to undertake that research I mean I'm currently pregnant and you know it is a struggle to to find bras for ever-changing size of of breasts and then when you're breastfeeding and you're nursing and you want to still exercise it's about finding products that allow you to you know have that ability to take the shoulder strap off for example and be able to still feed in that products and I think more companies are getting interested in this and I think I have seen products out there but we just don't have that scientific research yet. Yeah absolutely and I think you know going

back to what we mentioned in the beginning that having the right sports bra is also important from a kind of barrier to exercise point of view and so it's important that you know women are still active in pregnancy and afterwards and so you know thinking from a public health point of view it's really important that we hopefully get funding for that but like I do understand obviously from a ethical point of view this so I'm sure ethics would be a nightmare for this type of city yeah it's not the easiest unfortunately I don't think it's impossible though and I think it might be helped that more recently there's been guidance renewed guidance coming out nationally in terms of exercising for pregnancy and the sort of benefits related to that and there are research

groups and specifically looking at the wider area of women exercising during pregnancy which is fantastic so I feel like this is going to be a natural step on and we will get more information over coming years as to you know potential products for this this niche market it's just yeah we're a bit lagging I think in there at the minute which is a shame yeah and then looking kind of at younger age groups like teenage girls and school-age girls um I know that there's a drive in in education towards breast health there um and like a lot of the work that you guys are doing but what is the current kind of level of knowledge or current practice amongst girls when it comes to wearing sports bras like in school and pee and things like that? Yeah I mean we've done some really interesting research over the past few years specifically looking at this 11 to 18 year old school girls

bracket and we actually found from a breast education perspective that that was quite poor. And we had over 2000 school girls initially part of our research and 87 percent of them wanted to know more about breast health and breast education. And many of them didn't own a sports bra uh we saw um over half of of them seeing the breast as a barrier to them taking part in PE lessons so whether that was sort of embarrassment or not being able to find you know a right bra or yeah it's quite um important age and important area because you have girls who are developing at different rates throughout that 11 to 18 sort of bracket and we really feel that there should be compulsory uh education on breast health at a national level um and we have developed some

resources which are freely available for schools to download which you know includes like a lesson plan and lots of background information for them to share with the school girls and I think the next step for us now is to see whether we can you know almost sort of go to government and start lobbying for this to see whether we can get breast health and breast health education onto the school curriculum as a more of a compulsory part because we found some real sort of benefits of by implementing some smaller sort of breast education projects at schools we have seen knowledge increase following that so we feel like it's effective so it's just about rolling this out

on the larger scale now yeah absolutely I mean thinking back to like my own school days in PE I don't really I don't even remember having a sports brand I used to play hockey so you know I'm shocked hearing the the statistics but then when you reflect on kind of that age group it's not really something that's in the forefront of your mind and again thinking back as to is it important the education side of things even in you know sexual health classes you you would completely ignore the breast and breast health yeah yeah it's a good to know that that work is being done and those resources are available yes I think um we really need to target this this age um to bring in that education

because I think that can really set these girls up for life, really, especially because we see so many girls dropping out of sport at school age. You know, that sort of 16 to 18 sort of bracket, the move away from sport and exercise and anything we can do to reduce barriers for them to take part I think is really positive and it's good to see that you know there is research going into this and I think some evidence coming out which will hopefully start to initiate change. Yeah absolutely and so kind of just wrapping up the podcast of portsmouth and breast health you'll come to our sort of page where we do have the link to the treasure your chest

resources uh which are for the school education project there's also some um resources on there for bra fitting as well um so to to look at you know sort of a simple guide to bra fit we've got a video and a leaflet and things like that so I think if you want to start looking into more information that's a good place to start but yeah there's certainly more scientific evidence coming out worldwide which is fantastic so there should be a lot more uh information freely available for anybody to look at if they if they want to search amazing and then is it treasure your chest is you guys also contribute to that yes yeah that's a treasure your chest.org so that's where the resources can be downloaded specifically from from the school

girls project amazing well hopefully this podcast will kind of shed some more light and some education on on breast health. And maybe there are some people listening who are keen to get into that area of research as well, which we definitely need more of. Definitely. Oh, gosh. Yes. Please come forward. So if you're interested in researching this area, then there's plenty still to be done. Thank you so much that was jenny giving us the lowdown on breast health in sport and exercise specifically talking more about breast support and sports bras and hopefully you've come away with this thinking a little

bit differently um i know i have and i know i've picked up lots of tips that's all from me guys I'll see you again next week