Well, this seems to “bee” a growing trend. An increasing number of TikTokers have been claiming that taking bee pollen supplements have made their breasts grow larger. For example, Ivey Cross made a pair of claims in a posted video that’s already gotten over 1.3 million views. In the video, she said that two nights prior she had noticed that her bra had gotten tighter and that this came after consuming bee pollen “consistently for two to three weeks.” But as with many things that you hear on social media platforms such as TikTok, you’ve got to wonder how legit such claims really are.
There’s certainly been buzz on social media about this whole bee pollen thing. The hashtag #beepollen has gotten over 99.7 million views. And the hashtag #beepollenboobgrowth has gotten over 15 million views. Many have used these hashtags to make very “cherry”-table claims about bee pollen. One example has been a video with the phrase “bee pollen to grow [cherry emoji] before and afters” written across its top:
In this video, @imtaylorreynolds first showed a photo of herself asserting that this was before she took bee pollen. Then she presented what she declared was an after-bee-pollen photo of herself that was a bit more, shall we say, over-the-top.
Another example was a video that bore the statement, “Bee pollen makes your [cherry emoji] grow,” as you can see by the screenshot here:
By the way, when these videos showed cherry emojis, they weren’t really talking about growing actual cherries or cherry emojis. Rather, these TikTokers were using the cherry emoji to signify breasts.
Of course, a bunch of TikTokers relaying their personal “growth” experiences alone doesn’t make for much scientific evidence. Without really knowing who these TikTokers are and what they have actually done, it’s difficult to verify whether their claims are accurate in any way. Heck, you don’t even know whether they have actually been taking the bee pollen. And before and after photos don’t provide much proof either. After all, they could have easily cherry picked photos of their cherry emojis, so to speak. As anyone who has been on dating sites knows, taking photos at certain angles can make various body parts seem larger or smaller. These days any photo or video could be very well be doctored as well in different ways.
Speaking of doctored, is there any real medical evidence behind such bountiful claims about bee pollen? There certainly seems to be lots of different claims in general about bee pollen. In fact, it appears that certain people selling bee pollen products have been trying to spread these claims on social media like, well, pollen. Pollen is a powdery substance produced by flowering plants. Each pollen grain consists of two male gametes, the flower’s version of sperm. This pollen can reach the female reproductive portions of flowers via wind, water and living organisms such as birds and bees. Yes, folks, this is all about the birds and the bees of how plants reproduce. For example, when searching for nectar, a bee can end up collecting this pollen and transferring it to different flowers to help fertilize those plants. And fertilized plants, in turn, can produce seeds that can produce more such plants.
The pollen itself can contain a range of different vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, lipids, trace elements, enzymes, amino acids, and antioxidants. When bees collect this pollen, they can add their saliva and digestive enzymes to this mix as well. This could mean that bee pollen products—assuming that they are really made out of bee pollen—could have nutritional value.
Moreover, while the concept of eating insect saliva or plant sperm may not sound super appetizing to everyone, there doesn’t seem be any real significant dangers associated with consuming bee pollen. Again, that’s assuming that it is actually just authentic bee pollen that you are consuming, which could be a big assumption since supplements like bee pollen aren’t regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the same way that medications are. Also, you want to avoid bee pollen if you may be allergic to such things, taking medications that may interact with bee pollen such as warfarin, are pregnant or are breastfeeding. Ingesting bee pollen while pregnant could stimulate your uterus to contract and as a result threaten your pregnancy. And there just hasn’t been enough studies on the safety of bee pollen to deem it safe for infants to drink via breastmilk.
However, if you are expecting bee pollen to be the be-all and end-all when it comes to health, don’t be that way. There hasn’t been much scientific evidence to date to support claims that bee pollen can treat eczema, alcoholism, enlarged prostates, stomach problems, enhance energy and athletic performance or do the many other things that people have been claiming bee pollen can do. If you keep abreast of the scientific literature, you won’t find much evidence that bee pollen can increase breast size either. Again bee pollen just hasn’t been studied enough to tell.
Could bee pollen possibly help increase your breast size in any way? Well, your breasts aren’t like fixed mounds of concrete. Their sizes actually can fluctuate from day-to-day and week-to-week through the course of your menstrual cycle depending levels of hormones in your body such as estrogen as well as fluctuations in your body shape in general. Your breasts tend to be largest during your luteal phase, which comes right after ovulation after your estrogen levels have peaked. This rise in hormones leads to your breast lobules—which essentially are your milk glands—to swell. After you have your period, these lobules typically return to their previous size. Bee pollen may include phytoestrogens, which could potentially act like the hormone estrogen and thus, possibly, maybe, perhaps have some influence on your breast size in a similar manner. But until real scientific studies are done, this would be mounds of speculation.
Moreover, any change in breast size driven by hormones or hormone-like substances isn’t likely to be permanent. Once the hormones or hormone-like substances go down in level in your body so would your breast size. So don’t go about purchasing new bra sizes just yet.
So, again the topline with this TikTok trend is that there is no real evidence supporting the use of bee pollen to increase breast size. If you are on the clock waiting for bee pollen to change your body in such a manner, you could be waiting for a long time:
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