Women who used the BRAVA System report an increase of 1/2 to 2-cup sizes of lasting tissue growth. The amount of increase each person receives differs due to human biological variability plus an individual's frequency of use and duration of use. People will require different doses (amount of use) in order to achieve their desired results. In fact, many women, after attaining an initial increase in volume, decide to wear the System again to achieve greater growth. An analysis of approximately 100 clinical participants determined that the amount of hours and amount of days the System was worn were the important factors in determining growth. In other words, intensity and duration of wear were the most statistically significant variable influencing breast growth. (More than age, ethnicity, multiparous (multiple pregnancies), or having breastfed.) Therefore, the more you wear the System, the more your will grow.

In the two clinical trials undertaken, participants wore the device for a minimum of 10 hours per day and for an effective treatment period of 10-weeks duration. (It took an average of 14.7 weeks (range, 10 to 18 weeks) to complete the effective 10-week treatment period due to setbacks from the occasional inability to use the System.*) When the System was worn as directed, for a minimum of 10 hours a day for at least 10 weeks, on average most women grew approximately 1-cup size, or 100 cc.

Our research has shown that at least 10 weeks of sustained uninterrupted treatment for a minimum of 10 hours per day are required to achieve growth of about 1-cup size. True breast growth is a slow and progressive process. In fact, the initial breast enlargement you will experience is almost all due to swelling (edema) with little or no tissue growth. True tissue growth does not start taking place until the cells have been under constant tension over weeks of use. The result of sustaining this tension is a gradual accumulation of small daily increments of newly generated tissue.

As you can see from Figure 4, each day you wear the System for at least 10 hours and remove the System for the remaining 14 hours, with consistent wear, the resulting growth accumulates in a seesaw pattern as the daily process is repeated each day.

Because the BRAVA System is a medical device, each person will respond somewhat differently to the process. Our research indicates that there are three types of responses.

A.

 Rapid Responders - These are women who, after just starting to use the BRAVA System, notice a change immediately and grow rapidly. Most often, these are women whose breasts were previously enlarged by weight gain, pregnancy and/or breastfeeding and have now lost significant breast volume. Age can also be a factor. (As we age, breast skin loses its firmness, mammary tissue shrinks, and the proportion of fatty tissue increases, altering the shape of the breast.) These factors can produce a noticeable sag (ptosis) to the breasts.

B.

 Average Responders - These are women who begin to notice a change or increase within the first few days of wear and each day slowly accumulate true tissue growth. In clinical trials, these women averaged about 100cc of growth after 10 hours a day and 10 weeks of actual wear.*

C.

 Slow Responders - These are women who, after following the 10-hours-a-day recommended wear, do not see an increase or change within the first few weeks of wear. Most of these women have tight and limited amounts of breast tissue and/or may be intense exercise enthusiasts that burn more than they intake daily. Other factors such as race and/or not having had children and/or being younger in age can also be a factor. These users, in most cases, will need to increase the daily amount of time worn to achieve their desired result.

As a rule of thumb, if, after wearing the System over weeks of time, you notice that your breasts are the desired size after having the System off for 14 hours, you can maintain this desired growth by taking the number of weeks worn and doubling it. (See Figure 5A) For example, if it took five weeks to achieve the amount of breast increase you desire, an additional five weeks of wear would be needed to maintain this real breast tissue. (Thus, at the end of 10 weeks, your breasts will be even larger (by both edema (swelling) and true tissue growth). Approximately four weeks later, you will have true breast tissue growth similar to the increase you saw at week five. The amount of weeks needed depends on each users response to BRAVA and their own determination of how much is enough growth.

In Figure 6A (1) you can see that when the System was worn for 14 hours a day, it resulted in an accelerated growth curve. At the same time, sub-therapeutic wear patterns, such as the 7-hours-a-day as noted in (3), offer users little to no growth. It is recommended that the BRAVA System be worn as intensely as possible, especially for those who may be categorized as a Slow Responder.

Figure 6b also illustrates how missing days of wear will affect a person's progress and will necessitate additional wear time in excess of the actual time missed. The BRAVA System induces true tissue growth only when it is allowed to apply continuous and persistent tension over prolonged periods. By missing day 6, for example, the volume loss continues until the System is used again on day 7. As the curve in 6b shows, missing a day of wear on day 6 brings the volume growth back to the day 2 level. Thus, missing one day of wear can set a person back by several days.

Failure to use the System for a least 8hours over two consecutive days requires 2 weeks of additional compensatory wear time. In addition, failure to use the System for any 3 days over a 2-week period will also require 2 weeks of compensatory wear time.

The key to achieving growth is intensity and duration of wear…the more you wear the System, the more you will grow.

* Khouri, RK, Schlenz, I, Murphy, GJ, Baker, TJ. Nonsurgical breast enlargement using an external soft tissue expansion system. Plast Reconstr Surg. 2000;105(7): 2500-2514.