For all the effectiveness of the many breast-enhancing creams and pills on the market, you may as well save your money and devote a couple of hours to a rigorous "we must, we must, we must increase our bust" session instead.

And that's the good news about them.

Many women who want bigger, fuller, firmer boobs are taken in by claims of increasing bustlines the "natural way" without the risk of surgery. Because many of the breast-enhancing products claim to be "all natural" and come "straight from Mother Nature," it's easy to think that there's no harm in trying them. Well, think again.

According to Dr. Eden Fromberg, a holistic gynecologist and osteopath in New York City, "If something really does stimulate the breast tissue, it's not healthy unless they're [naturally] being stimulated by the milk hormone."

A perfect body in a bottle?

While it's tempting to think that we can get a perfect body from a bottle, many women don't realize that by popping pills and slathering on lotions they are subjecting themselves to nothing more than a placebo at best and something potentially dangerous at worst.

The most common ingredients in breast-firming and -enhancing products are wild yam, black cohosh, blessed thistle, damiana, dandelion root, dong quai, fennel, kava kava, saw palmetto and watercress. We ran this list by Dr. Fromberg. Her reaction:

Blessed thistle is an anti-vomiting agent. Kava kava is considered a sedative and a hypnotic that, in sleeping pill form, gave Dr. Fromberg hallucinations. ("Maybe you could hallucinate bigger breasts," she quipped.) Dandelion is a blood and liver tonic as well as a diuretic. A diuretic helps the body to flush water, which would only decrease breast size, Dr. Fromberg pointed out.