How Working Out Might Affect Your Boobs—in a Good Way

How Working Out Might Affect Your Boobsâ€"in a Good Way

If your girls could talk, they might be asking you to take them to the gym.

When your breasts hurt, the last thing you want to do is squeeze them into a sports bra and start jumping around, right? Well, get this: Working out might keep your boobs from hurting in the first place, according to a study published in The Breast Journal.

For the study, researchers surveyed more than 1,600 women about whether they experienced breast pain, and if so, how much it hurt and how often it occurred. The survey also asked about the women's ages, weights, bra sizes, and activity and fitness levels.

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A majority—52 percent—of the women reported experiencing breast pain. Interestingly, women with higher activity and fitness levels were actually less likely to experience it. Researchers found strong correlations between breast pain and women with larger cup sizes, older age, and lower activity levels. Since you can't really control your age or cup size, it's great to know that staying active and hitting the gym might improve pesky pains in your boobs.

That said, it's important to know that it's unclear whether women who are fit and active experience less pain because they work out or if it's the reverse: if those women work out because they experience less pain, says study co-author Nikki Brown, Ph.D., a professor of health and exercise at St. Mary's University in the U.K. and a breast health researcher at Portsmouth University, also in the U.K. Although previous research that Brown conducted on what portion of marathon runners experience breast pain showed the same correlation, that study was also unclear as to whether fitness levels were the result or the cause of less pain, she says.

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So while researchers still need to do more work to find out if the cure for sore boobs is just a workout away, you can minimize how much the girls annoy you mid-sweat session by buying a sports bra that suits your activity du jour and your bra size.

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