Should you wear your bra to bed?
No matter how hard we try to fight it, every woman (who doesn't opt for plastic surgery) must come to terms with the fact that aging means drooping.
We all know that it is inevitable, but that doesn't stop some of us from doing anything possible to delay it. And that includes wearing lingerie while you sleep.
Keeping a bra on in bed was said to be the secret to Marilyn Monroe's pert figure. Other celebrities, such as Mariella Frostrup, Paula Yates and Halle Berry, have admitted to doing the same.
Then, there's the famous La Decollette bra, specifically designed to be worn at night, in order to 'prevent wrinkles and maintain a youthful look'.
But could wearing a bra to bed actually cause more harm than good?
In an interview with Cosmopolitan, Dr Stephen Rankin, founder of the London Doctors Clinic, points out that wearing a tight-fitting bra to bed can restrict the blood supply to your breasts and the surrounding areas, including the muscles and lymph nodes.
This is wear you need to be most careful as, according to Rankin, "a tight bra may restrict the flow of lymph to the many important lymph nodes around the breast and armpit, hindering the system's vital function of flushing toxic waste-products from the body."
Dr Rankin emphasised that breast tissue can be damaged from the long-term indentation caused by wearing a bra 24/7.
If this weren't enough of a reason to avoid tight-fitting lingerie at night, Rankin suggested that wearing a bra while horizontal is very unlikely to have any anti-sagging effects.
When you lie down, your breasts are unaffected by gravity, so the support usually provided by a bra is "essentially redundant".
Given the added discomfort, it seems that the evidence to support nighttime bra-wearing is insufficient. Give yourself a break and stick to PJs.
