Breast News Magazine

If you’re into watching movies about pot smoking slackers who just happen to run into the craziest situations and even famous people on their journies throughout life, and you like the Forrest Gump type of movie where happen stance situations occur like that and can suspend reality to laugh your butt off for a while, then the Harold and Kumar sequel, Harold and Kumar Escape Guantanamo Bay is for you.  My sister and I went to see this movie, and it’s pretty darn funny.

What made me write about it for this blog is that there is a hilarious scene in the movie where a friend of theirs has a revolutionary idea in that he has a “bottomless” party instead of a topless party, because who does bottomless parties?  No one, right?  He has women standing around just hanging out on the bottom instead of exposing their breasts, and it’s actually a funny part of the movie. 

The movies are both definitely what you’d call low brow, sophomoric humor, but dammit, it’s fun to laugh at that sometimes!  The humor ranged from politically incorrect humor to racial profiling humor, to jokes about the proverbial white ignorant guy who probably means well but makes Americans look as dumb as ever to people not from this country. 

It’s a great post 911 movie that takes a look at the hysteria surrounding us being another victim, but not in a serious way whatsoever - oh no, their intentions aren’t to “make people think” with this movie, but rather to get them to stop thinking so much and just laugh at what  bunch of idiots we can all look like sometimes when we find ourselves judging others based on something that shouldn’t even be used to base opinions on, like skin color, ethnic background, sex and where you come from (state wise, this is for people in the US). 

All in all, it was a hilarious movie, and although the female nudity and breast shots were totally gratuitous, what else would you expect from a Harold and Kumar sequel, right?

A friend and I were shopping just the other day and were talking about a woman who wanted to get breast implants.  The interesting thing about this particular woman though is that she had perfectly nice breasts to begin with, so we were wondering why she wanted them.  Now granted, I know that Wonder Bras and other sorts of pushup bras can do wonders for the appearance of larger cleavage and larger natural breasts, however, this girl really seemed to already be blessed with a very nice, curvy body naturally.

When we discussed it further, there was a boyfriend involved who may have had a larger hand in deciding whether she got breast implants.  That’s really just speculation, but it got me thinking.  I’ve had several women write me telling me that they are considering breast implants or some form of alternative natural breast enhancement to please their partners.  I have to be perfectly honest, in that I think this is probably the worst reason to get your breasts enlarged or worked on.

You really need to make these types of decisions, where you are essentially altering a body part for good, or at least semi permanently, in order to please someone other than yourself.  Believe me, in the end, if it’s not something you really wanted for yourself you may end up resenting the fact that you got it done for someone else, especially if that person isn’t even a permanent fixture in your life any more.

When you do something like that for your partner, you’re really trivializing your individuality, and that in itself will be something that you regret when you get older, and almost always inevitably look back on your life with regret for decisions you made simply to appease others. 

I also question whether a person who demands or even strongly suggests you alter your physical appearance in such a dramatic way for them truly has your best interests in mind, or even whether they really love you as they say they may.  It’s just something to think about and that I wanted to put out there, especially for the women to whom this may apply. 

Can you imagine, you’re in the prime of your life, when your life is in full swing, and you are in the middle of your college career, you are diagnosed with something that is most common among women that are at least in their forties, many times well into their fifties?  Well that’s exactly what happened to one such college student at the ripe young age of 21, just the legal drinking age, and she was diagnosed with the scary disease.  

Her name is Colleen Cappon, and she is in a great minority, thank God, for this young age diagnosis of such a potentially serious disease.  The worst part about getting breast cancer when you are younger, is that it is usually caught in it’s more advanced stages because of a combination of factors. 

That combination is that since younger women are not expected to get it as much, the awareness isn’t there, and the other factor is that screening women for early breast cancer detection is hard since younger women’s breast tissue is more dense, and therefore a lot harder to detect harmful lumps or masses of tissue that may be cancerous in a mammogram.  Colleen Cappon had a particularly agressive tumor that had tripled in size just over a week after she was diagnosed, so she went radical and had both her breasts removed. 

She also had chemotherapy treatments to agressively go after the cancer before it spread to her critical lymph nodes or covered a larger area, overtaking her healthy cells.  At the age of 22 now, she is cancer free, and still follows a diet regimen rich in antioxidants, as well as takes Tamoxifen for a few yeas to help block the estrogen hormone, which is thought to fuel breast cancer growth.  Since breast cancer runs in her family, and her mother had it twice already, she will have to take precautions, even with her breasts removed, which is unfortunate! 

Trans fats have caused quite a stir here in approximately the past decade since they have been banned from many fast food restaurants (self imposed, surprisingly), and are under a lot of scrutiny for the health issues they contribute to as well as a controversial addiction that can be developed by eating a lot of foods that contain them.  If you’ve seen “Super Size Me”, the documentary, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. 

Trans fats, or partially hydrogenated fats and oils, are a fat that has part of it’s molecules missing.  It’s supposed to be a better way to get more flavor into food, and it has a longer shelf life.  The problem is, once these partially hydrogenated fats get into our bodies, they can contribute to clogging arteries, contributing to obesity and weight gain, and also they are reportedly not as fulfilling as normal fats, so we eat more of it which equals more calorie consumption which is bad for all around health. 

It’s not exactly shocking that now trans fats have been linked to a higher risk of breast cancer as well.  Researchers in Europe are concluding that trans fats may not only clog arteries, but also may raise the risk of  breast cancer after they compared women who had high levels of trans fats in their bodies with women who didn’t and found that the women who had high trans fats were about twice as likely to have breast cancer than their counterparts.

It’s actually kind of funny how trans fats came about.  They were initially created for lower fat and supposedly “healthier” versions of high fat foods, like margarine as opposed to butter for example.  However, it was discovered years later that trans fats were causing the same amount of problems as regular fats, if not more, in the human body, so they really were less healthful than their old fashioned counterparts, like the butter margarine comparison.

Imagine my mom’s surprise when, after being a devout margarine consumer, favoring it over butter for years, she found that what she had thought was a more healthful choice could have consequently been harming her health more than ever.  She still does consume it in moderation, but in the back of her mind now she knows that the days of heaping her bread with margarine may be over, especially since she has breast cancer in her family and is reaching an age where it may become a concern. 

Hormone therapy, or HRT, given professionaly in medical offices for decades as a means to help women going through menopause of perimenopause to ease their symptoms of the change of life, and for a variety of other medical reasons, has demonstrated to not be the most safe thing in the world, and many have stopped using it because of serious links to heart problems as well as breast cancer. 

That was the women who were on the hormone therapy that combined two estrogens, estrogen itself and progestin.  Women who were taking estrogen only hormone treatments were thought to be pretty much side effect free until it was discovered that they are much more likely to get benign (non cancerous) breast lumps from taking it.  Now, they’re benign when found but the concern here is that they are thought to be the first early signs of possible breast cancer formation years later, and that is what is causing the concern. 

The studies involved women on estrogen only therapy, and tracked them for seven years, but the benign breast lumps could take years more to develop into problems that lead to fuel the breast cancer development.  Women who have had hystorectomies are the only women who can take the estrogen only therapy (I’m not exaclty sure why, perhaps because they cannot take the progesting for unknown reasons). 

Now that HRT has proven to almost more of a threat to health than a help, many physicians have stopped recommending it to patients they may have otherwise recommended it to for non life threatening problems. 

Let’s face it, menopause symptoms are merely a nuisance to most women, and there are not very many valid medical reasons to take it, so it may be best for women to resort to natural means of controlling their hormones and making the drop in estrogen more bearable with age.  One way is by controlling the diet and exercising, which can naturally balance hormones like no medication can - plus it makes you feel great! 

We’ve talked about breast tenderness before on this weblog, but I thought it was worth broaching the subject again since right now I happen to be experiencing some really tender feeling breasts, and they also happen to feel like they’ve grown a whole cup size overnight.  Why?  No, I’m not pregnant, I’m just about to go on my period, and ever since I can remember this is how my breasts get right before Aunt Flo comes to town.  Sorry for the corny reference, but as you can tell, I’m in some pain right now, so I’m not thinking entirely clearly (the PMS may have something to do with that too).

Breast tenderness is actually quite common in women, especially around times when their hormones tend to dip and skyrocket, which usually happens to be when some event is messing with us, such as a baby in our body or the menstrual cycle beginning it’s monthly routine.  Many times I will even experience tiny little lumps, but I always know that they go away from sheer experience personally, so I pretty much ignore them.  If they persisted past my period I would know to get them checked though, believe me - especially since breast cancer runs in the female side of my family on my mom’s side. 

Wow, and with that I think I’m signing off.  That could have been the worst paragraph I’ve ever written!  Sorry ladies….

Yes, this title does sound ridiculous, because it probably is.  A South Carolina woman is claiming that a Victorias Secret bra she purchased malfunctioned and cut her breast and chest, resulting in a significant laceration that required recovery.  She claims through her attorney that she was fired from her job because she had to recover from her injury, and is seeking unspecified punitive and compensatory damages from the multimillion dollar lingerie company for her pain and suffering as well as loss of wages and lifestyle changes.

The claim further states that the injury to her breast will result in scarring.  The article I read about this case did not say whether this bra was an underwire bra, but I assume it would have to be, as I assume the underwire must have come out of the cloth casing somehow and cause the injury, because nothing else on a bra would cause a laceration like that, that I know of.  The claim is that the bra was negligently manufactured, including inspection of the bra, and passing on to retail sale as safe. 

I always wonder with cases like this whether some people have a shot in h$%% at getting any sort of damages, especially when the pockets of the company are much deeper and they can usually afford much more in attorney’s fees.  I also wonder with the client that is suing, whether they really understand that they could be involving themselves in a long, drawn out court battle that could cost them thousands of dollars, and so they better have a pretty good shot of winning. 

I’m not sure what I think about this person’s case, because I cannot see an injury like this resulting in being fired from a job.  I would think they might be a little more understanding than that if they felt the injury were a legitimate one, but that’s just my little old opinion.  She may indeed be entitled to compensation if the injury is proven to be the fault of the manufacturer. 

A German woman in her early thirties is planning on suing doctors who she says gave her breast implants, silicone for that matter, instead of giving her the surgery she went in for, which was to smooth wrinkles out on her chest that developed after she lost a ton of weight and had the skin sagging problem that so many women have in the chest and breast area after losing a lot of weight. 

Women unfortunately often find that their breasts sag and their chest areas generally look a bit more “wrinkly” after they have had a major weight gain, and subsequent weight loss, which includes large amounts of weight lost for cosmetic purposes and health purposes, and many times during pregnancy and after pregnancy, the skin loses it’s elasticity and becomes “slack”. 

All this poor lady wanted to do was have that lifted, and she ended up getting silicone implants implanted into her chest, where her already large C cups were enlarged to a D cup.  She apparently had awaken in horror to find that she had implants in her chest rather than the surgery she went for.  Gee, I say that some lawsuits are frivolous, but this lady has a legitimate gripe here!  I’d say she’s got more than a leg to stand on in court since this was such an obvious flub on the surgeon’s part. 

I mean, don’t the surgeons talk to you right before surgery?  I’m trying to imagine how this kind of stuff happens.  I mean, it’s bound to happen every once in a while, but on a scale of this magnitude? 

I just read a news story about a woman who, at only the age of 35 years old, still in her prime and writing for big, successful TV shows, who had wanted to still bear children and get married some day, had made the radical decision to get both of her breasts and her ovaries removed.  Why would such a young woman make that type of difficult and seemingly radical decision?  Well, it’s because she decided to get tested for specific gene mutations after her mother died of breast cancer and also had ovarian cancer as well within her lifetime.

Because her mother had both, she decided, not thinking that she was really in any danger, but as a precaution, that she would go and get the newer tests that can test a woman for specific  gene mutations that increase the odds of certain kinds of female cancers, including breast cancer, and can help a woman decide what she wants to do with the information if she indeed finds that she is in a pool of women who have dramatically higher chances of getting the cancers.

Well, she thought she’d come out fine, and was devastated when she was told she tested positive for a gene mutation that made her over 80% more likely than other women to contract ovrian and/or breast cancer by the time she was in her older age.  She had some choices to make, and she ended up making the most radical choice available out there.  She ended up landing on the notion of having her breasts removed and also having her ovaries removed.

She so far has had only her breasts removed and is still coping with that, but she has decided until she is the age of 40 before she gets her ovaries removed, since she wants to somehow conceive a child before she has to undergo that radical surgery.  She says that she would like to find a life partner, but under such dire circumstances she may have to employ the services of a sperm bank. 

Some women may question the radical procedures, especially when the choice can be made to simply undergo rigorous preventive maintenance such as getting tested a lot more often for the beginning signs of the cancers, or making huge changes in lifestyle, all of which still do not guarantee that you will not get these cancers.  The fact is though, that doctors say this woman has actually dramatically increased her chances of survival by removing the parts that were most likely to become cancerous on her body. 

I’m mixed on this one.  I applaud this women for making such brave changes, especially in this day and age where a woman’s breasts are so often inflated with surgery and it seems every woman prizes breast implants and breast implant alternatives as part of their ubiquitous vanity routine (hey, I’m not immune), but I also think hey, life is short, and you never know how you’re going to ultimately die, so I just wonder how effective this testing is. 

I mean, does it ruin your life, or does it really give you a new lease on life?  I guess it’s different for everyone, that’s why we have the power to make individual medical decisions like this, no matter what anyone else may think. 

I have to say, I really felt for this woman when I read this story, and I feel the TSA was totally wrong for the way they handled the situation.  In routine airport security check, a woman who was flying from Lubbock to Dallas, Texas says that when she went through the first airport check for metals, it was fine.  She does have two nipple piercings, one bar and one hoop, and also a belly button piercing. 

She said that then, after she went through the first check, she went through another check with a wand.  When the wand beeped around her chest area, she informed the female TSA agent that it was because of her nipple piercings on her breasts.  She said that a male agent told her she would have to take her shirt off behind a screen and remove the metal from her body. 

When she asked if she could just show a female agent the piercings in private, several male agents told her she would have to remove them to board her flight.  She said that behind a screen, as she removed her nipple piercings from her breasts, she heard the male agents laughing about the situation, and to add insult to injury, she had a hard time getting one of her breast piercings out and had to ask for a pair of pliers.  She was given a pair of pliers, and she said the removal was painful, and that many times the skin heals around the piercing, and makes it very painful to remove, and then painful or impossible to reinsert. 

She has said that she filed a complaint with the TSA and has not gotten an apology, which is all she wanted.  She also said that they conducted an investigation and found the proper protocol was followed.  She has hired the services of high profil attorney Gloria Allred, who has acknowledged that the woman is just looking for an apology for a mishandling of the incident and if they do not issue an apology, her client is prepared to take legal action. 

I think they should just issue the apology and acknowledge that their agents could have handled this situation differently and given the woman more dignity and respect and avoided the humiliating experience all together while still following correct protocol.