Breast News Magazine

When I read this headline, my hopes sort of sank, because we all know that mammograms can truly be lifesavers for women who regularly schedule them and tend to their breast health as an important issue.  The headline was not a trick headline either, it really did mean that less women are getting mammograms, which means that the fight to educate women about the importance of mammograms and maintaining breast health is sort of floundering at this point in time. 

Of course, this is something health officials would like to change for the better, so they are looking at ways to boost the numbers.  My own mom recently admitted to me that she skipped a year getting her yearly mammogram, and of course that is a cause for concern, especially since women should get them done yearly when they pass a certain age.

Is this truly a sign that all the movements to advocate breast health and breast cancer prevention are failing?  Well, it certainly means we still need to encourage eachother to keep an eye on our breasts, and get the mammograms yearly that we need to help along early detection if there is any cancer to detect, and very possbily save a life.

The suggested possibilities for reasons behind the mammogram drop are that health care may not be available to the women in need of mammograms, the technicians and health care specialists who perform them may be in a shortage, and a number of other economical and socioeconomical reason. 

One thing remains, this needs to turn around if we are to successfully campaign for breast health and prudence in getting yearly breast screenings.  Even if we have to offer free mammograms, there must be something the government can do. 

My aunt died of breast cancer.  I’m sure most of you also either have relatives or even close, dear friends that you know who have battled with this cancer, as it is one of the top diseases that women get. In the metropolitan Cleveland area, the Susan G Komen foundation puts on a lot of fundraising events, all aimed at breast cancer awareness as well as raising money for the continued breast cancer research and additional technology needed to fight this killer cancer.   The most well known Susan G Komen foundation sponsored fundraiser is the Race for the Cure, where literally thousands of cancer survivors and advocates show up and run/walk to show their support and rack up monetary donations. 

Awareness is extremely important, because now most women know how important it is to get regular breast cancer screenings by their gynecologists once a year, as well as to perform monthly self breast exams to look for anything out of the ordinary, like lumps, fibrous masses, discharge from the nipple and other red flags that could or could not be a sign of cancer, but nonetheless always wise to follow up on. 

I just read how the Susan G Komen foundation started, and it is a truly inspiring story.  A woman started this foundation on behalf of her sister, who died at the young age of 36 years old of breast cancer back in the early 1980’s.  Her sister, on her deathbed, made her promise that she would help raise awareness and fight this terrible disease which had ravaged her body and taken her from her children much too early. 

The sister’s name that started the foundation is Nancy Brinker, and she has really brought this nonprofit organization a long way today.  She said she knew she had to make it big, make big splashes and go on PR jaunts to get the word out and get awareness going that breast cancer needed to be addressed as a serious and formidable disease that could be caught much earlier and treated if women only knew what to look for, and were educated on risk factors as well as the importance of getting mammograms and doing self exams to minimize the risk of the cancer spreading and also to minimize the risk of dying from the cancer.

I was just listening to a new commercial for a women’s health vitamin by (I believe) One a Day multivitamins which contains vitamin D as a purported breast health supporter.  I looked into whether Vitamin D is good for breast health, or if there is any anecdotal or hard evidence to back this claim up. 

Let’s first talk a little bit about what vitamin D is best known for.  Vitamin D has been otherwise known as the “sunshine vitamin”, the vitamin that us humans tend to get the most of from direct exposure to sunlight.  That’s right, we actually absorb this through our skin and our body synthesizes it into usable vitamin D.  It’s been thought to help ward off certain things like depression, because of the link to sunshine and depression. 

Vitamin D is also commonly added to milk and other fortified cereals.  Well, now new studies are suggesting that ingesting vitamin D in one’s diet may help a woman to ward off breast cancer too.  Some of the studies performed have shown, or at least highly suggested that, vitamin D may help to reduce the likelihood a woman will develop breast cancer by up to 50%.  That’s pretty darn good if you ask me. 

The studies imply that women who have spent a lot of time outdoors and gotten lots of sunlight, or have ingested adequate amounts of vitamin D dietarily have a substantially lower risk of developing breast cancer later in life.  Enough so that they say even a modestly low ingestion or intake of the vitamin can reduce your risk of breast cancer by ten percent (this is still pretty good if you ask me).  The bottom line? 

While studies like this are hard to find conclusive, I’d still say it’s better safe than sorry.  Make sure you are getting adequate amounts of the sunshine vitamin, and it just may help you to reduce your likelihood of developing this scary cancer some day….I’d say that’s very worth it!

It’s recently come to light that a shocking truth may be evident in the treatment of breast cancer, or more specifically in the conventional, chemotherapy treatment of breast cancer when it is in its more advanced stages and may not be able to be treated by radiation alone.  The allegations against the health community are that less educated women may get less in their chemotherapy doses than women who may be of a more affluent of educated stature in society. 

Not only that, but women who are obese may also get less than ideal dosages of chemotherapy as well.  This fact has recently been reported by US researchers.

How is this quantified?  Well, researchers are saying they have noticed this trend when studying the dosages given by health care providers, as a trend in the administration of chemotherapy in undereducated and obese women, for breast cancer.

They say that it’s not necessarily done in malice, but most likely is done under the doctor’s assumption that an obese woman may have more adverse side effects from the chemotherapy than a woman of normal weight, and therefore gives them less than optimal dosage, and with undereducated women the association may be there that they would be less willing or able to stick to a rigid health care regimen that is needed for chemotherapy to work optimally. 

This is an interesting study into the human mind, and is no doubt going to be followed up on, I would think, as researchers are saying this may help explain why some groups of women tend to have more breast cancer relapses, while others tend to go into permanent remission. 

The focus is so high on female breast cancer, and rightly so - women are about 100 times more likely to get breast cancer than men it has been estimated, due to substantially more breast tissue - that no one really gives much thought or much study to the male version of this potentially deadly cancer. 

But the fact is, men do run a risk of developing this cancer that usually is contracted by women, but it is usually at later ages, when most cancers run a higher risk for most people, for men it usually occurs around the ages of 55 to 70 years old approximately.

It used to be that male breast cancer would be detected much later than female breast cancer, simply because it’s not at the forefront of a man’s mind to get checked for this type of cancer, and usually a lump or hardness of some sort would have to be discovered for him to get checked out, but now there are some more sophisticated techniques for detection in both men and women, and the seriousness of both the male and female version are about the same with the same prognosis, so the focus has been more open minded about possible male breast cancer cases. 

The signs to look for are a puckering around the male breast, and indented look of the nipple that wasn’t there before, nipple discharge, and irregularities of the nipple.  So you see, it seems that men really need to keep an eye on the nipples of their breasts for early detection, while this is more of a secondary check for most women. 

No matter what your age, if you do a breast self exam and you find a lump, it is always a scary thing.  Many times though, these lumps are perfectly natural, and are not a sign of breast cancer, but rather a natural phenomena that happens to almost all women, especially at certain times of the month due to hormonal changes.

 Women tend to get little bumps or lumps in their breasts the time around their period, and sometimes also during the period.  These are actually just fibrous little cysts that form due to hormones, and they usually go away in just a few days.  You’ve probably felt these before in your breasts, and you know exactly what I’m talking about. 

These types of fibrous lumps usually are accompanied with a tenderness, which also indicates usually that they are due to your menstrual cycle.  The other types of lumps you may find, which are also generally harmless and actually quite common are calcium depositis in your breasts, or microcalcifications. 

They are actually tiny deposits of calcium buildup in the breasts, and they can actually vary in size and usually be detected on a mammogram and ruled out as cancerous masses fairly easily.  They can, however, sometimes become cancerous, although it is rare. 

Supposedly taking calcium supplements does not increase the likelihood of these calcium deposits forming in the breast tissue though, so don’t worry if you are taking one (it’s a good thing still!)   

Not only is a former contestant of the hugely popular reality show (that I’ll admit I’m addicted to, after making fun of reality TV for months and finally getting sucked into this addictive show), Carolina Gynning, is not only auctioning off her huge DD sized mega breast implants on Ebay, but the good hearted contestant is also reportedly giving the proceeds to a charity.  Not sure who’s going to want a pair of “used” breast implants, but hey, I was shocked when the grilled cheese with the Virgin Mary went on Ebay for an outrageous sum also!

The foxy big boobed reality star has had the breast implants in for ten years, and actually you are supposed to get them replaced every ten years, so maybe this is just a publicity stunt, I’m thinking.  She supposedly wants to downsize, and I can see why - carrying around a pair of DD breasts would get very hard on your back after a while, especially if you like to run or work out at all, or heck even sitting at a desk with that size of implants would probably be a strain!

The proceeds are supposed to go to victims of the civil war going on in Rwanda, and she has encouraged bidders to give whatever they can, since it’s all for a good cause.  Actually, maybe she’s just going with her natural breasts, and not getting implants - she did say she was a C before the implants - jeez, some women would kill for natural C cups!  Crazy world…..crazy!

Yes, it’s true.  The likes of ridiculously, make you want to barf beautiful Victoria’s secret models, like Gisele Bundchen and Adriana Lima (the dark haired, fair eyed beauty), wear push up bras to give themselves more cleavage! 

Even stars who are fairly well endowed on their own need a little lift, especially if their breasts are real, and with age they do tend to sag and go a little lower, and need pushing up for cleavage.  Stars like Angelina Jolie, Scarlett Johanssen, and other curvaceous starlets have been spotted on the red carpet at various times wearing obvious push up bras. 

Women who don’t really need them because they have fake breasts, but seem to still like to wear them (I personally don’t care for the breast implant and push up look, but whatever), are Victoria Beckham (Posh Spice, who it was just recently announced will be coming to the US the city of sin with her gorgoues hubby David Beckham), and Pamela Anderson are just two of the starlets I can think of who have obvious implants, but still like to push ‘em up to their chins for extra boobage. 

Jeez, it seems that breasts saving lives has been in the news a lot lately.  Probably really because the news can have a field day with cheesy one liner headlines on these types of stories, and they love it!  The last story we brought to you about breasts and lives was a women who’s life was probably saved by her large breast implants. 

She was hit by shrapnel that very well may have went right to her heart and killed her in an instant if it weren’t for the shrapnel instead lodging in her breast implant.  So, not only can breast implants serve as possible impromptu flotation devices, apparently they may occasionally act as a shield against injury! The latest story though, is about how a woman’s padded bra may have saved her life by helping to cushion the blow of a bullet. 

The woman, who was outside for a New Years celebration, said she noticed a sharp pain in her right shoulder suddenly.  The amazing part of this story is that it was the woman’s bra strap that may have prevented much more serious injuries.  One hald of the bullet was found inside the woman’s bra strap and the other half had only partially penetrated the skin.  The police said that she may have been saved from worse injuries by her bra strap. 

The bullet’s origins are still a mystery, and it is unknown whether it was just some yahoo shooting in celebration of new years, or whether the bullet had an intended purpose for someone else.  At least she was lucky enough to have her bra on.  If I were her, I’d save that bra, and keep it for good luck!

2006 brought a lot more recognition and searching for alternatives to breast implants for women desiring bigger breasts, who did not want to undergo surgery to achieve it.  A great product called Bountiful Breast came to the forefront in many people’s searches as the leading natural breast enlargement pill, and some herbal products followed as great alternatives as well. 

Brava, the pump that you wear for 10 weeks as a bra apparatus, may have hit a bit of a slump the 2006 year, as I did not find much new information about the product, and it really wasn’t in the news too much.  One of the newer, more novel concepts for natural and herbal breast enhancement was herbal breast enhancement chewing gum. 

This was both a concept that seemed a little kitchy, but also caught on because of it’s convenience, and also because this was a way for herbal breast enhancement companies to put the ingredients into a product that would be easily absorbed by the body.  The breast enhancement gum actually served as a perfect delivery mechanism because it actually does a lot of the digestive breakdown needed for these natural phytochemicals to absorb into the blood stream, right in the mouth with the saliva. 

The saliva contains a lot of digestive enzymes itself, so the effect of the gum may have been a little more potent or immediate, since the herbal ingredients were more readily absorbed by the body thanks to the delivery method.  Breast pumps for enlargement still came in as an option as well, but again, not really with as much attention or publicity as other options. 

All in all, 2006 was a pretty good year for women finding out about these types of products and what might work for them.  Hopefully 2007 will bring us some breakthroughs in natural breast enhancement that really blow our mind, but I think we’ve got a pretty good thing going so far in the area of natural breast enlargement now.