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Is breast size an indicator of a woman’s risk for diabetes?

Published on October 21, 2014 at 14:42 / Updated on October 11, 2019 at 15:30

Could the size of your bra cup have an influence on your health? It just might! A new Canadian study suggests that measuring a woman’s breast size at age 20 could help predict her risk of suffering from diabetes in the future.


Hence, women who wear a bra cup size of D or larger, have an elevated risk of developing diabetes close to five times greater than women who wear an A cup. Even after making adjustments for a number of other factors that are known to influence one’s risk of suffering from diabetes, such as obesity, diet and family history, women wearing D cups still had a 68% greater risk of suffering from diabetes. Women who wear B and C cups, the most common sizes, saw their risk increase with the size of their bra cups.


Even though these results do not come as a surprise to most experts, they nevertheless raise intriguing research questions. We know that obesity is a major risk factor in suffering from Type 2 diabetes and, because breasts are mainly composed of fat, women who are overweight tend to have larger breasts. However, research has demonstrated that the size of a woman’s bra cup is not directly correlated to her body mass index (BMI). Hence, some scientists have given the hypothesis that the fat that accumulates in the breasts could, just like the fat that accumulates in the abdomen, greatly influence insulin resistance, one of the underlying causes of diabetes.


At the moment, the relation between the size of a woman’s bra cup and her risk of developing diabetes remains hypothetical. However, maintaining a healthy body weight, being physically active regularly, and eating a healthy diet are proven strategies that greatly reduce our risk of being afflicted with diabetes.

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