A survey conducted at the 2012 London Marathon is the first to examine the incidence of breast pain in female marathoners. It found that almost one-third of the respondents had breast pain, and of those women, 17% sometimes cut back on mileage or intensity because of the pain.

For the survey, to be published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, a team led by Nicola Brown, Ph.D., gathered completed questionnaires from 1,285 female registrants for last year's London Marathon. Of those runners, 32% reported experiencing at least occasional breast pain, known clinically as mastalgia.

Some women were more likely to suffer mastalgia than others. The study notes:

The prevalence of mastalgia increased with cup size, ranging from 24% in participants with ≤A cup size breasts to 51% in participants with ≥F cup size breasts. This is an important finding as it has yet to be established whether breast size is related to mastalgia, owing to the small sample sizes in previous studies. Furthermore, it indicates that the condition is not restricted to only larger-breasted women.

Women who had not given birth were more likely to report mastalgia (35%) than women who had given birth (28%).

Age had no effect on the respondents' report of breast pain.

Mastalgia often affected the women's running. About 25% said they had missed one or more runs because of it. About 20% said they did shorter runs, and about 30% said they cut back on intensity when dealing with mastalgia. (In general, when respondents were experiencing mastalgia, more intense exercise caused more discomfort than moderate exercise.)

Forty-four percent of the women with mastalgia reported taking no steps to relieve their discomfort. The most popular attempted means of alleviating mastalgia were using a sports bra (21%), pain medication (15%) and holding their breast (14%).

It should be noted that 91% of the women said they ran in a sports bra. Brown told Runner's World Newswire that her study suggests current offerings don't meet runners' needs.



"Many sports bras do offer a range of cup sizes, [but] others have fairly generic sizes, and this may impact on the fit and support the bra offers, which may impact exercise-induced mastalgia," Brown wrote in an email.

"Compared to the range of everday bras on the market, which come in a variety of designs of different shapes, structures, etc., that will allow women to select a bra that is most appropriate for their individual breast size and shape, there is less choice in sports bras. Bra manufacturers need to do more research and work closely with scientists and women to design bras which allow women of all shapes and sizes to lead active and healthy lifestyles."

The video below offers tips on choosing a sports bra.

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