Does taking bee pollen increase breast size? No, that's not true: Bee pollen has not been shown in medical research to increase breast growth, a medical expert told Lead Stories. There are no "well-established" uses for bee pollen, a medical school reported.
The claim appeared in a post on Facebook on May 17, 2024. It began:
I was forced to take bee pollen everyday to increase my cup size!
After two months they grew by 2 sizes so I guess it worked🤷♀️
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri May 24 18:11:21 2024 UTC)
Bee pollen does not help breast growth, Allison Rodgers (archived here), an OB-GYN and reproductive endocrinologist at Fertility Centers of Illinois, told Lead Stories via telephone on May 28, 2024:
I have no doubt that bee pollen has health benefits, but it unfortunately has not been shown in medical research to have any interaction with estrogen receptors.
And so unfortunately, listen, if you eat enough honey, if you eat enough of anything, you're going to gain weight and it's going to cause your breast to be bigger. But you know, really it hasn't been studied and I think that we need to be really careful when a social media influencer touts something that hasn't been studied and then lots of people do it, which has the potential for harm.
Rodgers said that some claims on social media say that bee pollen contains "phytoestrogen" (archived here), which are estrogen-like compounds found in plants, which is what purportedly causes the increase in breast size. She noted that bee pollen is not a plant and said a study (archived here) found bee pollen did not interact at all with estrogen receptors.
The University of Rochester Medical Center reported about bee pollen on its website (archived here):
There are no well-established uses for bee pollen. Many claims are made for pollen, but no solid studies support these claims.
Other fact check agencies have reviewed this claim, including USA Today.
