Breast News Magazine

Well, while I can’t really say I’d personally recommend this since there are actually a few women I know who were alerted to the fact that they had breast cancer because of self exams or sort of accidental self exams or exams by their significant other if you know what I mean, but there is talk in the medical community now of not recommending breast self exams. 

They say that the self exams are especially not needed for those that are in the younger age group - ie perhaps under 45-50 years old since the risk dramatically increases with age in women.  I think that this bit of news, which happens to be coming from breast cancer specialists and researchers, can perhaps be a bit confusing to women of all ages, since we’re basically had it pounded in our heads over and over since we started visiting our gynecologists at a young age, that breast self exams could potentially save our lives if they were performed in a timely manner and with due dilligence. 

Specialists are saying now that breast self exams, also termed BSE’s as an acronym, say that self exams can not only be too confusing and result in too many biopsies and false alarms, but they also may be hard for patients to remember, and may give a false sense of security and have women doing them instead of going to get what they should, which is an annual mammogram, especially if in the target risk groups defined by age, and sometimes even race depending on the type of breast cancer you’re talking about. 

Even with this news, many women swear by BSE’s, and say that they’ve actually detected lumps that were later identified as cancerous in their breasts because of their regular breast self exams, and that they would never have found them on their own earlier had it not been for their early education on the importance of these exams.  In the end, it’s a personal decision. 

I think we discussed this a few months back, but it’s been in the news again lately, how now mammograms are hopefully going to be a little bit more exact and efficient perhaps with a newer technology using 3-D or three dimensional glasses.  Seeing in three dimension just means that you can see all angles of a person, or an object, in this case, the looker would be seeing any items of concern in the breast in three dimension, perhaps making it easier for them to identify and maybe even expediting the viewing process for mammograms and making them more effective.  At least that’s the goal.

The whole point of inventing the three dimension mammograms is to help women with the denser breasts, because it’s harder to identify lumps or cancerous masses in women with dense breasts, and often an MRI must be ordered for women where the test results of a mammogram are inconclusive because of density in the tissue and resulting difficulty in identification of any areas of concern.

The way the three dimensional mammogram would work is that the radiologist would simply use specially designed 3-D glasses.  I’m sure you’re picturing the type that you get to go to the movies, but I’m sure they’re a little more sophisticated than cheap cardboard   Just kidding.  This would mean that women who ordinarily might have to have an expensive MRI to conclude whether they have any problem areas would just have to have this 3-D test done, which is much less expensive.

Since there are many women under the age of fifty years old that have dense breast tissue, and there are still a lot after that age as well, when breast cancer risk is higher, this is a great money saving and time saving measure, researchers are hoping, and could even help save lives if it can identify early cancers that might be missed with just a regular mammogram.  All in all, this is some great news for women, and for women with dense breasts especially!

The man who caused such a stir by being pregnant and being on the Oprah Winfrey show and in the news over these past few months, showing off “his” pregnant belly, has given birth.  The man though, is really a woman becoming a man, so it’s not really the miracle that all the headlines would have you believe. 

What’s funny about this story is that when I first read it I thought that an actual man, with all male plumbing had somehow miraculously conceived a baby, and that,I thought, was a miracle.  But a woman who is a woman on the inside still but a man on the outside “cosmetically” having a baby isn’t a miracle, it’s just interesting news and a reflection on our ever diversifying population - a good thing, but nonetheless, an example of media sensationalism.

The man, named Thomas Beatie, has given birth to a baby girl on the 29th of June.  But he won’t be able to breast feed because part of his transfer to a man (Thomas is a transgender man), he elected to have his breasts surgically removed, and has received hormone shots of the male hormone testosterone to remain with man-like features such as facial hair and a deeper voice, and rougher skin, all those things that make a man a man.

Beatie’s wife, Nancy, was not able to have childre, so Beatie stepped up to the plate and went about having a baby via artificial insemination.  He has said that he opted not to have his (her) sexual organs (female) removed, because he did want to have children some day. 

A man who is a singer in a local bar has said that over the past decade he has slowly been turning into a woman, and he does not want to lose his masculinity but apparently he is afflicted with some sort of a hormonal imbalance that has caused him to slowly begin to exhibit womanly physical characteristics.

While some men desire to become women and purchased various products for male breast enhancement, this is a case where a man has actually been turning into a woman against his will, due to a biological reason that is as of yet unknown.  He has asked regular doctors for help after his past decade of beginning to lose facial hair, develop softer skin like a woman, and also to grow breasts like a woman, but doctors are saying that they have not seen a case where a man has spontaneously begun to produce estrogen on his own. 

Every man has a little bit of the female hormone estrogen in his system naturally, as every woman has a little bit of the male hormone testosterone in her system naturally, but this man claims that he has spontaneously started producing high levels of estrogen for an unknown reason and has doctors baffled.  I’m wondering if doses of testosterone might be the answer, but apparently that may not solve his problem.

When there are hormonal imbalances in a woman or a man, as in, when a woman has too much testosterone or a man has too much estrogen, there are noted changes to the body that exemplify the opposite sex.  So for women, they may begin to grow facial hair, may start to have problems with bad acne, or they may develop a thicker, tougher skin like men have, whereas a man may begin to grow female breasts, his voice may become higher, and his skin may become softer if he has too much estrogen producing in his body. 

Scientists do not know why this man might have simply just had such a huge increase in his estrogen production on his own, but he says that his doctors originally suspected he was trying to change his sex which he adamantly denies, and he says that he just wants his manhood back, and does not want a sex change, nor does he want to slowly become a woman as he is now. 

This is a somewhat obscure question, but nonetheless, it may be important, especially if you are a habitual indoor tanner in tanning beds, and happen to go topless in tanning beds or even out in the natural sun, which many women do (more the former than the latter since laying out in the public eye topless takes quite the cajones in most areas).

Well, I remember hearing about this when I was younger and was going to the tanning beds all the time in highschool (shame on me, I’m sure I caused a lot of damage to my skin that I would never dream of doing now that I’m an adult and don’t care as much about being tan to look good and “fit in” with the rest of the pretty girls), I used to hear about how you should put round bandaids on your nipples, or put powerful sunblock on them when you went tanning topless, because it could “deform” your nipples.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not slamming tanning beds.  As a matter of fact, I still sun myself once in a while now, I just think that constant tanning is dangerous and should be limited, but that’s my personal opinion and I don’t want to get preachy.  Now, about the “deformity” comment.  I don’t think that tanning can actually deform your nipples, but I think it can definitely discolor them.  I remember going unprotected a lot of times, and my nipples would take on a mottled look, with white coloring in them, instead of the pink healthy look that they should be sporting.

So, in short, I think if you’re a topless tanner you SHOULD protect your breast’s nipples by applying a stick of strong SPF to them.  I’d recommend the Neutrogena SPF stick, because I use that on my scars when I’m in the sun to protect them and it works wonderfully - they get almost no pigmentation or sun exposure when I use it.  I would say try the round bandaid thing, but let’s face it, that would be hard to get to stay on and you’d go through a lot of round bandaids if you’re a frequent tanner! 

Jessica Simpson is known for a lot of things, unfortunately, most of them not having to do with how talented a singer she is, but rather her reality tv exploits and who she happens to be dating and splitting from.  She’s also famous for having very nice breasts, as most guys who are fans of Ms. Simpson will attest to!  And who ran this very classy poll of who has the nicest celebrity breasts?  Well, it is none other than one of the biggest tabloid rags out there right now, InTouch Weekly, who ran a poll for the 2008 year to see who was voted to have the nicest boobs in H Town.

Jessica Simpson does claim that her breasts are 100% real, and it appears that may be true by looking at them, but sometimes it’s hard to tell when breasts are not in a top or a bra for sure whether they have been artificially enhanced or not, so that’s definitely nowhere near conclusive.  Oh, and I’m no expert on real boobs or fake ones either, of course!

Jessica’s latest woes were with her newest squeeze, Tony Romo, the football player, whom she was said to have broken up with, but it seems to the two have reconciled, at least for the time being, and have still been seen out and about town.  Jessica was married to boyband singer Nick Lachey for a while, then she started to date a couple other guys here and there, but didn’t seriously hook up with anyone until she dated singer John Mayer (she must have a thing for singers!), and she supposedly was “dumped” by him.

Jessica has said she’s wanted children before, so I’d hate to see how big her boobs get when that happens!  Nevertheless, Jessica seems like a nice enough girl, so kudos on her breast achievement. 

Well, it’s yet another breast or bra related story of how something breast related may have helped save a woman’s life.  This time it’s about how a sport’s bra (oh how we all love them!) may have helped save a hiker’s life.  This story comes out of the Bavarian Alps of Germany.  An American woman was hiking in the alps when she became stranded for several days.

She used her resourcefulness and was thankfully able to survive and use her sport’s bra as a flag to help make sure that rescuers saw her and were able to come to her rescue.  What ended up happening is that the 24 year old woman from Colorado attached her sports bra to a cable that was used to haul lumber down the mountain, signalling to near by lumberjacks that someone was there and needed help.  It worked.  The lumberjacks “followed the bra” and found her and were able to take her to safety. 

Here’s where this seemingly unimpressive story gets interesting.  Apparently the woman had fallen 16 feet onto a narrow ledge when travelling with a companion and had been searched for a few days by crews in the area after going missing.  She dislocated her shoulder in the fall, and also had a pretty banged up area on her legs, and was unable to climb or move very far.  She survived on what little water she had left over the next 70 or so hours, and noticed that the until-then out of service lumber cable had started moving again.

I can only imagine the relief when she saw it start to move again!  She then used her resourcefulness and put her sports bra on the cable, and who knows, without that if or when she would have been found, especially since she had very little water and was not in a visible area that was easily found.  The human body only survives for so many hours without water, so this was by far the most important part of her survival. 

There is a breast cancer that I wasn’t even aware existed, that is called a Triple Negative breast cancer, that is apparently and thankfully a rare form of the potentially deadly disease, but is also very hard to treat and deadly.  This invasive form of breast cancer only affects about 15 out of one hundred invasive breast cancer patients, but is very hard to find the right treatment for and is fairly resistent to otherwise successful breast cancer treatments (depending on the advancement of the disease of course).

There is another catch to triple negative breast cancer.  It also primarily affects african american women, usually younger than the usual demographic population that gets breast cancer.  Here’s what makes triple negative breast cancer different and harder to treat than normal breast cancer. 

Women with triple negative do not have receptor sites for the three main hormones that fuel breast cancer, therefore a therapy that is often successful at treating normal breast cancer, which uses hormones, cannot be used in triple negative treatment because they lack those receptor sites to begin with and it would not be responsive to hormone therapy. 

Therefore, these patients can only use chemotherapy, which narrows down the treatment options greatly and also narrows down the odds that this one trick pony approach to treating it will actually work to put the breast cancer in permanent remission. 

Also, triple negative breast cancers tend to come out of remission fairly often, after a patient thinks they are out of the woods so to speak.  What makes this form especially heartbreaking is that it affects women in the prime of their life, and is so very hard to treat, making the odds go down that they will be able to live a healthy and happy life for the rest of what should be their naturally prosperous years.   

An exciting development in the ever increasingly popular elective plastic surgery of breast augmentation has happened where patients can get  a highly detailed glimpse that is also very realistic, of what they would look like with certain sized breast implants. I actually saw a demonstration of the new 3D breast augmentation and implant simulator online and it is very realistic looking and does give different body types a detailed view, from side, front and other critical angles, of what they would look like depending on what cup size they choose.

Breast augmentation sugery is of course an unnatural surgical option to natural breast enhancement, but it nonetheless rages on in popularity because of our society’s preoccupation with the sexuality of breasts and of course every woman’s desire to have nice looking, well shaped and sized breasts to conform to this beauty standard.  Not saying I’m exempt, because I’m right in there too!  By the way, see our new Breast Actives review for one of the natural options to breast enhancing. 

This new system allows plastic surgeons to digitally photograph a patient’s body and come up with a fully 3D image of the patient’s body from all angles.  It then allows the surgeon to go in, with the patient watching, and give them an almost exact preview of what they would look like depending on how big they went, or how small. 

This means it can show you what you’d look like with a new pair of DD cup size breasts, versus a more realistic large C cup or modest C cup, and helps patients determine what looks best on them, and what look they are going for or what breast size they are most comfortable with.  The pictures show a detailed look at the lay of the breast implants, how they would look from a side view, a front view and other more angled views so that patient can make sure they’ll be happy with the outcome, as long as it looks how they say it’s going to from the pictures.