In ancient times, women and sometimes even men, wore corsets to improve their postures and to obtain a perfect hourglass figures with very slim waists. Centuries later, these articles of clothing have been made popular once again by current female celebrities, mostly for their perceived cosmetic benefits. The idea behind waist training is that wearing these constrictive pieces of clothing daily for long periods of time will eventually make your body mold itself into the corset’s shape.
Experts believe that this is completely bogus because after pushing your torso in like that, when you remove these corsets, your organs will still go back to where they were originally positioned, regardless of time spent wearing them. They also believe that over time, wearing these waist trainers will do you more harm than good. Here are some of the adverse effects of waist training.
1. Impaired breathing
Breathing is controlled by a muscle known as the diaphragm that separates the chest from the abdominal region. Wearing corsets constricts this muscle, making it harder to breathe and causing shortness of breath, light-headedness and fainting spells in some extreme cases.
2. Bruising
One of the myths about waist training is that your bone structure can be changed, along with your general figure. This is false because as an adult, your bones have already been properly formed so their normal structure cannot be affected by corsets. Therefore your bones can get bruised when you wear corsets for too long and bone bruises are more painful and take a longer time to heal than skin bruises.
3. Acid reflux
Heartburn is not a pleasant thing to experience. Wearing corsets causes compression of your abdominal region, including your stomach. This can cause reflux of your stomach’s gastric acid content into your esophagus. While this is not much of a problem when it happens only once in a while, chronic acid reflux can lead to gastro-esophageal reflux disease and esophageal cancer.
Instead of relying on waist trainers to get in shape, it is better to take the good old food and exercise route. While it might seem exhausting and stressful, it won’t cause you bodily harm and produces guaranteed effects on your general body structure.
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