Archive for January, 2009

Potential Signs of Breast Cancer

I decided that we should reiterate what some of the potential symptoms of breast cancer can be, since early detection and diagnosis usually leads to the best prognosis, availability of effective treatments, and time being on your side since the disease has not advanced so far that it has become untreatable.  Women need to make sure they keep tabs on their breasts, know what they usually look like, touch them often so they can get used to what they feel like, and get used to examining them by themselves every week or so just to very quickly survey any changes in appearance, texture, feeling, etc.

So, here is a list of potential symptoms of breast cancer.  It can mean nothing as well, since the breasts are prone to change in appearance and feeling and substance with the menstrual cycles, hormonal fluctations, and pregnancy.  So, this is a list of things to look out for, not to get freaked out about and unnecessarily panic about since they are not always definite signs, but they are definitely something that you should book an appointment for if they don’t disappear fairly quickly, or look very alarming.

1.)  A thickening or hardening of the breast tissue.  This can easily be dismissed as a cyclical thing, and even I get these little fibrous things in my breasts around period time, but if they do not go away, or they just feel “different” to you, then make an appointment to put your mind at ease.

2.)  Any discharge from the nipple, whether bloody or clear.  This is not usually normal, and should be looked into quickly.

3.)  Any short of orange peel, divoted appearance to the breas tissue, almost like cellulite.  Any indentations in the breasts, especially the nipple area, should be looked into.

4.)  Redness, pain or inflammation.

This is not by any means an exhaustive list of potentail signs of breast cancer, but it’s a good start and they are some of the most common ones found in women with varying stages of breast cancer.  It pays to be knowledgeable about your body, and your knowledge about your own breasts just may save your life some day.

New Page on Breast Enhancement Creams

There have been lots of questions about breast enhancement creams and what they can do for your breasts.  Not every woman wants to strictly enlarge their breasts, but some want to make their breasts look fuller, more rounded, more toned and more firm and lifted.  There are some great options to get the job done naturally, via massage and natural breast enhancing creams. 

If you’re interested in learning more about breast massage, natural breast enhancement through cream or serum application, and what it can mean for your breasts, see our new page breast enhancing creams.  Very interesting what can be done with an externally applied product now, not just for breasts either, but there a lot of transdermal products that are very effective these days (they enter through the skin, delivering their therapeutic ingredients that way, instead of the typical oral way that we are used to, “popping a pill”).  Enjoy!

Teen Has Breast That is Much Larger than the Other

I received a concerned email from a teenager who was almost out of her teenhood and had one breast that was considerably larger than the other – by about one cup size.  She said she had asked her doctor whether she could do anything about it and he advised that she was most likely still going through puberty and breast growth and they may catch up to on another, but that there was really nothing to do until they both finished growing. 

She, understandably, is very concerned and self conscious about her breasts being noticeably different sizes, and wanted to know if there was anything she could do naturally that would help the other one catch up to the larger one, to make them more symmetrical and the same size.  Here is how I responded:

I know this seems very difficult and you feel very self conscious about it, I actually have a friend who had the same condition, and she ended up getting surgery to correct it with small breast implants (see our page on breast implant alternatives – this was not in our response to this young lady though, because this is not going to work differently on both breasts), filled to different sizes for each breast, to make them look even.  This is actually a very common problem in women, so please don’t feel like you’re alone.  In fact, one of mine is ever so slightly larger than the other – most women have a slight difference, just to varying degrees.
 
Unfortunately, there is no natural way that I know of that you can get one breast to grow more than the other.  There is no guarantee that if you used some sort of external cream or anything and massage that your one breast that is smaller would grow larger.  Since you are still most likely going through the growth phase with your breasts, you may need to simply wait this one out, and if when you are fully grown and your growth stabilizes, they are still noticeably different and it is a real issue for you, I would consider talking to your doctor about cosmetic surgery options to get this corrected. 
 
Like I said, this is a very common problem in women, and varies in it’s severity, in fact many women do choose to get surgery if it bothers them a lot, so please do not feel alone.  I’m sorry I couldn’t offer you more options, but this is a case where natural methods simply cannot be guaranteed to make both the breasts grow the same amount, which would still leave you with the discrepancy in breast size.  Good luck, and thank you so much for writing. 

Breast Massage Not Only May Enhance, But Also May Help Exams

We might feel a little funny massaging our own breasts, but doing so can not only possibly help a natural breast enhancing cream work better by stimulating the tissues that are responsible for breast lift and tone, but also by helping to stimulate fullness and erectness of the breasts, making them appear younger, more toned, and sometimes even increasing size. 

Breast massage has been used for years in Chinese women as a means for helping to maintain their youthful perkiness and natural beauty, and you may also benefit from it.  The key is to be gentle.  So not be rough, this can be counterproductive and even dangerous to the health of your breasts.  However, soft stimulation can benefit, as well as get you more familiar with this wonderfully feminine and important part of your body.  Your breasts are essentially the giver of life. 

They nurture and feed infants, and they make you feel like a woman, at least they’re one of the things that makes you feel womanly and feminine.  They are also something that can become cancerous fairly easily, especially in some women, and that is why it is so important to familiarize yourself with your breasts at least several times a week by touching them, to see how they typically feel when you are menstruating, but also when you are not.

Many of us tend to get little lumpy things in our breasts that are benign and perfectly normal, during periods of hormonal fluctuation, such as during our period.  It’s good to figure out what is normal for your breasts so that you know your body better and when you feel something that you think might be a problem, you can adequately gauge it and figure out if you need to visit your doctor to have it looked at or even biopsied. 

Feeling your breasts several times a week not only familiarizes you with how they feel, but it also lets you have an intuitive knowledge when something does (if it does) pops up that doesn’t feel like anything you’ve ever felt before – or if something lingers beyond your menstruation time when typically it goes away in a few days, that’s when you know there’s a cause for concern.  So don’t be ashamed or embarrassed to get to know your breasts!  It can be very therapeutic to massage them with a lotion or cream, but it also may help save your life some day

First Breast Cancer Gene Screened Baby Born

Welll, this sounds like the stuff of science fiction, and where it’s headed I don’t know, and to be honest, even though it’s a result of the positive movement toward gene testing and breast cancer prevention through genetic testing, I’m not sure that this is a good thing that now we are starting to test babies for these types of genes.  Is this really something that we want or need to know from the moment a baby is born?  Hmm, good question, and I’m sure for some it has some ethical and personal implications. 

babies, taking the humanity out of humans.  Maybe I sound a tad old fashioned, but that’s how this kind of stuff makes me feel sometimes.  Now don’t get me wrong, they just tested this baby while she was still in the womb, they didn’t inject her with some super-baby DNA or anything like that, it just sounds like that may be what we’re headed for if this kind of stuff keeps up. 

And don’t think I’m against genetic testing, I’m not, I just wonder what good it does on a baby that hasn’t even been born yet and what purpose it could possibly serve to have this information when a child is born since breast cancer usually doesn’t show up until later in life.  The parents of the baby girl did use in vitro fertilization, which is what allowed the doctors to manipulate and test the embryos that created her life, so that explains how they go ahold of the information. 

The gene that is known for increasing the risk that a woman will get breast cancer in many cases increases the risk of breast cancer to about 80%, which is a very steep likelihood and understandable reason for concern.  It is the reason that many women, such as Christina Applegate, are choosing to have radical double mastectomies to avoid getting cancer in their breast tissue. 

Olivia Newton John on Breast Cancer and Deepak Chopra

I just got done watching the spiritually enlightening DVD Deepak Chopras Seven Laws of Spiritual Success, and although I would say this DVD could have definitely been done better as far as a cheesiness that could have been lightened up a bit, it was thought provoking and enlightening, although a  lot of it was repeat information from what I’ve read of Mr. Chopra’s before in some of his best selling self help books. 

I love his books, I think everyone should read them at some time because they bring up again what life is all about and how people should treat eachother with kindness, dignity and respect since we are all of the same consciousness and essentially the same mind, body and spirit. 

It’s all a bit metaphysical but definitely makes sense if you think about it.  He gets into a lot of how our cells react and we can make our bodies do what we want them to, counteracting the fact that certain things are involuntary.  Very interesting stuff.  He’s also very good and telling people how to heal not only their bodies but their minds and souls.

Olivia Newton John was an integral part of the DVD.  She told the viewers how she struggled with breast cancer and survived it and how sometimes painful experiences end up being a great learning experience and test as to the endurance and resilience of the human spirit. 

She was so inspired by reading Deepak Chopra’s work and his teachings that she actually recorded a very spiritual album that was all about healing and becoming one with other people, not treating eachother as in a competitive or maliced way, but rather recognizing that we are all one and that we should all act as one and try to lift humanity up instead of try to tear eachother down. 

He also teaches that the ego is what gets in the way of us truly fulfilling and knowing our own souls and becoming fully enlightened.  Olivia Newton John says repeatedly that she feels these teachings have helped her cope with numerous crossroads in life, including her successful battle with breast cancer in the nineties.  We’re glad you’re still here Olivia J

 

Bab Boob Jobs on Celebrities

I saw a cover on one of the gossip rags in the grocery store the other day, and someone who I thought otherwise had a decent boob job that is somewhat in the public light, at least for now because she’s a reality tv star from The Hills – Audrina Patridge, looked pretty botched on the cover in an itty bitty bikini top.  

In full clothes, you can tell she has a boob job, especially since she is pin thin everywhere else, but they actually looked ok, not too huge or over the top, but in a bikini top, whoah, even my boyfriend was saying they didn’t look too good, and he thinks she’s a good looking girl normally.

It almost looks like her boob job was done with her boobs too far apart – there’s too much space between them and they hang awkwardly.  Another D list star who has a notoriously bad boob job, along with some botched fat removal (Liposuction) surgery on her belly area, is Tara Reid, who is currently rumored to be in rehab right now. 

Let’s see, who else.  I’ve always not cared for Pamela Anderson’s breast implant job, and now that they are larger than life again (she actually looked good for a while when she reportedly got them removed), they simply look like she had soccer balls implanted into her chest – too big, too hard looking, very unnatural, and she’s a beautiful woman without all the hair and crazy makeup, just natural, which is too bad. Breast implant alternatives might be a nice choice for someone like her who isn’t flat chested to begin with, and apparently has no issues with symmetry.   

There’s also Vivica A. Fox.  I really, really like her as an actress. Lover her in Kill Bill, loved her in the Curb Your Enthusiasm series, but hate her boob job.  They are simply too large for her body and to unnatural looking.  They look like they would be hard to the touch.  A beautiful woman and talented entertainer, but she needs to ditch the bad boob job and go with something more natural looking or just take them out all together. 

And last but not least is Kellie Pickler, an American Idol reject who still is somewhat in the limelight.  She seems nice enough, but she overdid it on her boob job, inflating her flat chest too much for her adorable small frame.  Cute and bubbly – should have gotten breasts to match the personality, not gargantuan mammoths girlfriend! 

 

What is Polymastia

Some of us love our breasts, some of us hate them.  Although our breasts may be a heavy burden that gives us back pain for those of us who are naturally large breasted, or give us insecurities and feelings of diminished femininity for those with what they think are “too small” of breasts, it’s usually the norm for us to like the fact that we have two breasts.  That’s the norm, and that’s what we of course see in all the magazines, but there is a fairly common disorder called polymastia where women get a third breast that grows somewhere on the body.

You might be picturing something like I was when I read about this physical abnormality, like the movies that have aliens with three breasts or something along those lines.  I think once I even saw a comedy with a woman that had a third breast growing out of the center of her chest, firmly nestled in between her two breasts, so it’s a concept that’s sort of a laughable oddity that no one thinks really exists.  Even though it doesn’t exist like that very often, the physical attribute of having more than two breasts does occur fairly often, it’s just not as obvious as you’d think.

Apparently polymastia is often thought to simply be something called a lipoma, which is a harmless mass of fat that grows in a lump-like shape somewhere else on the body besides the breast area.  For example, maybe what I had was actually polymastia and not a lipoma on my back.  i had a slow growing growth on my back, nestled under my shoulder blade on the left side of my body that I had to have surgically removed a few years ago.

It just appeared to be a big lump that started off small and gradually kept growing bigger and bigger until it had to be removed or cut out.  It depends on the situation of course, but polymastia can take on many forms, as most other physical oddities can, so they can take different shapes, and some can even have nipples, although most don’t. 

Good Bras Dirt Cheap Now

You all know how hard it is to find a really great, high quality bra, and you also know how hard it is to find one of these bras at anything under thirty to forty bucks sometimes.  I mean, come on, like a small piece of material with some clasps and maybe an underwire should really cost that much money!  We know we’re getting robbed, and yet most of us will pay a pretty penny to get a comfortable and flattering bra, which sometimes seems to be mutually exclusive in the world of lingerie which is both functional AND sexy.

But right now, with the finances of so many in uncertainty, all kinds of deals are found on bras.  Just the other day I was at Kohls and they had good bra brands like Warner, Vanity fair and Olga marked dramatically down, to the tune of fifty percent off their already lower and reduced prices.  They also happened to have a clearance rack full of good brands like the names I mentioned before that were reduced by as much as eighty percent because they wanted to get rid of them. 

Granted, those ones on the clearance racks are often a strange pattern or bright color that not many people are interested in buying other than for the novelty of the item, but hey, if you plan on wearing them under heavy wool sweater, who cares what the color is, all that matters is comfort! 

I also saw that Macy’s and Dillards were having sales on their lingerie collections, many of which are top name brands and also their store brands, which aren’t half bad either.  I saw the same type of discounts, but of course with their already jacked up prices, the discounts didn’t amount to as much  as they did at discount retailer Kohls, where a lot of my friends buy all their bras and underwear, and for good reasons. 

You  might even be able to find some deals on bras at Victorias Secret right now, especially since it’s after the holiday season and they are still trying to undoubtedly clear out their overstock from the season that left many retailers disappointed and disillusioned about the current state of the American economy.  I know they have their annual bra sale, but they may also be adding extra discounts to entice buyers to load up before the deals are gone.