Women are bombarded with images of big-busted women via advertising and the media, making many feel inadequate and leading them to regard bust size as a “life-or-death” issue.

Ladies who want to enlarge their breats should consider heading to Thailand to undergo breasts slapping. I am dead serious, ladies! Slapping? Yes, breast slapping is an officially approved method of breast enhancement.

Khemmikka Na Songkhla, a Bangkok beautician invented the method of breast slapping that was eventually approved by Thailand’s government health board in 2003 as a natural alternative to surgery.

Ms Khemmikka says she has enlarged the breasts of thousands of Thai women over the past 14 years – not with chemicals or silicone, but by using traditional massage. Reports show that breast slapping can increase breast fullness by 4” within 3-6 months of continuous treatment.

The treatment involves a kneading action that massages fat from surrounding areas around the breasts, and pushing them towards the breasts. The fat from other areas of the body eventually fill the breasts to create a fuller appearance and size. Breast slapping can be relaxing, stimulating and painful.

The routines were supplied by a Bangkok beautician, Khemmikka Na Songkhla , who has been pursuing a patent for her grandmother’s secret fat-kneading technique. Unlikely as it seems, the idea is to shift one’s unsightly bulges to more strategic areas up front.

When Ms Khemmikka was an adolescent, her granny mocked her for wasting time rubbing her nipples with a miracle cream in hopes of sprouting big breasts. She said she should rub the old-fashioned way, until it hurt. By repeatedly pushing any flab from her sides and midriff towards her chest, and afterwards dousing Ms Khemmikka’s breasts with ice water, her granny boosted her breast size by 4in and her confidence soared.

Ms Khemmikka, now 35, says her shapely breasts are all the advertisement she needs and has marketed the technique in her beauty parlour for 15 years. Six sessions cost $380, and yield an increase of up to 4in without injections, chemicals or implants.

But the lucrative business threatened to go bust after a client developed breast cancer and blamed it on her breast massage. Distraught, Ms Khemmikka asked the Health Ministry to learn if there could be a link with breast massage.

Dr Pennappa Sapcharoen, the deputy director of the traditional medicine division, told her no clinical trials had been done, but she was intrigued by the technique. The ministry launched a six -month study on volunteers aged 20 to 60, and found vigorous massage left their breasts cancer-free and measurably bigger.

Pennapa Subcharoen, head of the Public Health Ministry’s Thai traditional medicine institute, said Khemmika’s methods were equivalent to the exercises used by body builders.

“It is like men going to a gym to build specific parts of their bodies by lifting weights with that part,” Pennapa says. “In Khemmika’s case, she tries to move fat from parts it is not supposed to be to where it should be

Ms Khemmikka helped the Institute of Thai Traditional and Alternative Medicine to come up with its three-month regimen of self-massage and daily breast-boosting exercises. Dr Pennapa also insists that skinny girls must eat more if they expect to increase the size of their mammaries.

Khemmika, 34, advertizes on a billboard in front of her house-cum-clinic in a suburb of Bangkok that she can “beat small busts to be big.”

“The slogan is merely a ploy to draw people’s attention,” says Khemmika’s husband, Pasit. “In fact, we massage them or slap some parts of the body to enlarge the breasts.”

Khemmika squeezes, pinches and slaps fat and muscle on the upper chest, the sides of the torso, and the belly of clients with cream or gel in six 10-minute sessions. After the treatment, which patients say is painful, Khemmika instructs her customers in special exercise techniques and massage to keep their breasts in shape.

Her customers come from a wide range of backgrounds, ages and professions. They range from college girls in their early 20s to a 70-year-old retiree. Models, actresses and politicians have all attended her clinic, she says. “These women once had chicken-egg size breasts. After the course, they have become ostrich egg size,” she says.

But not all can attend Khemmika’s course. Khemmika has to turn down customers who are too skinny or do not have much fat on their upper chest or sides of their torso. “I just tell them: Go back and put on some weight before coming back to me.”

Many women thought this treatment was a joke when it was first reported, but the track record speaks for itself. And there seem to be no major risks associated with this technique. Go book your ticket to Thailand now.