By Rosaland Tyler
Associate Editor
New Journal and Guide
The Bloomer Bra is a new invention which aims to stop busy women from dying of heart attacks and strokes, two diseases that disproportionately killed one in four males in 2021 compared to about one in five females.
Although about 50 percent of all women, over 60 million women in the United States, or 44 percent, have some form of heart disease, which can affect them at any age, the Bloomer Bra aims to help females with heart disease by collecting and analyzing data like electrocardiogram, pulse rate, respiratory rate, and heart rhythm, in real time. Data from the bra is transferred to the patient’s primary care doctor.
“It looks exactly like your bra,” Bloomer Bra noted on its website. “We are embedding our circuits into the daily bra. It feels the same!” The bras have “washable flexible circuits that can be embedded into fabrics in a discrete way.”
High-tech sensors are installed in the Bloomer Bra. This new high-tech bra tells a woman if she is having a heart attack or stroke. The sensor bra may also send messages to women who have had heart attacks or strokes, as well as those who are less likely to get lifesaving medications and other interventions. Prices for Bloomer Bras range from about $21 to $65 and can be purchased online.
“I just published a paper … showing a certain type of heart attack is on the rise in women under the age of 45 … This is why we all need to start thinking about prevention really early,” said Erin Michos, director of women’s cardiovascular health research at Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Thanks to a $1.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for a clinical study, the Bloomer Bra is actually a medical device that understands and treats heart conditions that are unique, disproportionate or different in women.
An app tells a woman not just about her blood pressure, but about potentially irregular heartbeats, lab results and the impact of medications, weight and physical activity. A woman may see a chart pop up on her cellphone after taking a walk, for instance, showing how it lowered her blood pressure.
Researchers are also working on a breast-cancer detection bra called the SmartBra. If it detects a suspicious mass, it will alert the wearer so she can follow up with a specialist.
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