Breast health tips

For 99% of ordinary women, taking good care of their breasts does not require buying thousands of maintenance kits or eating a mess of breast enhancement supplements. If you follow these seven words "no rubbing, less anxiety, and regular check-ups", you can avoid more than 90% of common risks.

A while ago, my best friend went to a beauty salon. I heard people said that she had breast hyperplasia, and she could "unblock the lumps" by pressing a button. She was so excited that she spent 8,000 to apply for an annual card. After pressing for two months, her chest hurt so much that it was difficult to lift her arms. She ran to the hospital for a color ultrasound. It was originally just a normal physiological hyperplasia before the menstrual period. The technician used brute force to push out local gland edema, which had to be applied for a week before it disappeared. To be fair here, not all breast massages are useless. If you have blocked or engorged breasts after childbirth, it is effective to seek relief from the rehabilitation department of a regular hospital or a certified breast massage therapist. However, massages like those in beauty salons that apply unknown essential oils on the breasts and claim to be able to "remove residual milk" and "enlarge breasts" are really easy to avoid - those essential oils are likely to have estrogen components added, and brute force massage may damage the delicate breast ducts, causing problems even if there is no disease.

Speaking of fussing, many people don’t realize that emotions have a much greater impact on breasts than you think. Last week I met a 22-year-old girl in the clinic. She had been taking the postgraduate entrance examination for more than half a year. Every time she came to visit her aunt, her chest hurt so much that she couldn't touch it. She was so scared that she cried thinking she had cancer. After the color ultrasound, there was nothing wrong. It was just hormone fluctuations caused by long-term stress and staying up late. Regarding the impact of emotions on breasts, different fields actually have different views: Western medicine believes that long-term anxiety and anger will interfere with the normal operation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-gonadal axis. Hormone levels will rise and fall, which will naturally lead to swelling, pain, and hyperplasia. Traditional Chinese medicine has always said that "breasts belong to the liver meridian." When liver qi stagnation occurs, the first thing to be blocked is the chest meridian. If you also have the problem of breast swelling before menstruation, don’t buy Xiaoyao Pills or breast patches. Try taking 10 minutes a day to go downstairs and walk twice, or hold a warm water bag and apply it on your chest for 15 minutes before going to bed. Most of the time, the swelling and pain will disappear, which is more effective than any number of health supplements you take.

Another point that is most easily overlooked is regular screening. Don’t wait until the pain becomes unbearable before you think of going to the hospital. Of course, there is no need to be overly nervous. If your immediate family members (mother, aunts, sisters) have a history of breast cancer, it is recommended that you do a combined breast ultrasound + mammography screening every year at the age of 30. For ordinary women, it is enough to have a breast ultrasound every year before the age of 35, and then add a mammography after the age of 35. Many girls say that the mammography target is so painful that they dare not do it. It is really not true. The pain is not even half of the pain during menstruation. Moreover, the detection rate of early calcification lesions by mammography cannot be replaced by color ultrasound. If the early lesions are really missed, the loss outweighs the gain. By the way, many people ask me whether drinking soy milk will supplement estrogen and aggravate hyperplasia. There is really no need to worry. The isoflavones in soybeans are phytoestrogens, which can help you regulate hormone levels in your body. Drinking a cup of warm soy milk every day is much healthier than drinking half-sugar milk tea.

As for the statements posted on the Internet that "wearing underwired underwear can cause cancer" and "papayas can enlarge breasts" are basically IQ taxes: there is currently no evidence-based medical evidence proving that wearing underwear can cause breast cancer, just the kind of shaping underwear that is so tight that you can't breathe. Wearing it for a day will indeed compress the lymphatic flow. Just take it off when you get home from work. There is no need to wear it for 24 hours just to look good. The papain in papaya is decomposed by gastric acid when eaten in the stomach and cannot reach the chest at all. If you eat too much, your whole body may turn yellow. Don't try it blindly.

I have been in the breast department for almost 10 years, and I have seen too many girls who were not sick at first, but who had problems by themselves. In fact, the breast is an ordinary organ of the body, no different from your arms and legs. You don’t always have to think about "detoxifying" or "toning" it. If you eat well, sleep well, and stop thinking about it, it will be fine. If you really feel uncomfortable or feel an unknown lump, see a doctor from a regular hospital as soon as possible. It will be more effective than any other folk remedies~