Breast health regimen

Adjust your living habits according to hormone fluctuations, perform targeted screening once a year, and don’t hold your emotions in your breasts.

My best friend was diagnosed with BI-RADS Category 3 breast nodules during her physical examination last year. She was so panicked that she couldn’t attend class. So she went to the beauty parlor downstairs at home and ordered a 8,000-yuan knot-removing package. She rubbed it for half a month, and it was so painful that it was difficult to lift her arms and put on clothes. When she went to the hospital for a review, she found that the nodules were actually 2mm larger. The doctor who attended the consultation frowned and scolded her for messing around.

To be honest, I had believed those claims about unclogging before, until my cousin, who had been in the breast department for half a year, told me that most of the so-called "hard nodules" that beauticians call "feeling out" are normal breast glands, and they are deliberately scary to attract orders. If it is a pathological nodule, it will not be dispersed no matter how hard you rub it. Instead, it may stimulate the growth of the lesion. If it is malignant, violent massage may even cause the spread of cancer cells.

As for breast care, the views of Chinese and Western medicine actually have different emphases. There is no need to argue about right and wrong.

The logic of Western medicine is very straightforward: 90% of breast hyperplasia is physiological and directly related to the fluctuation of estrogen in the menstrual cycle. No special intervention is needed at all. As long as it does not affect normal life, there is no need to take medicine. The so-called "detoxification and stagnation removal" simply does not hold water - the breasts are not sewers, so how can there be so many toxins to be discharged?

The perspective of traditional Chinese medicine is more towards overall conditioning: the breasts pass through the liver meridian, and "stagnation leads to knots." When the mood is not smooth and the liver qi is not comfortable, premenstrual breast swelling and pain are indeed prone to occur. Drinking some rose tea appropriately and massaging the Taichong point to soothe the liver and regulate qi can indeed relieve discomfort. However, serious Chinese medicine never recommends that you violently massage the breasts locally. To regulate the qi of the whole body, it has nothing to do with whether it is rubbed locally.

I worked on a project for more than a month in the past two years. Before menstruation, my chest was so swollen that it hurt to wear ordinary underwear, and it hurt even when I touched it. Later, I tried to slow down my work pace one week before menstruation, stopped all iced milk tea and espresso, walked 20 minutes more home from get off work every day, and soaked my feet for 10 minutes before going to bed. The swelling and pain in the second month disappeared by 70%. Didn't you notice? Every time you quarrel with your family or stay up late at night, do your premenstrual chest pains get worse than usual? Hormone fluctuations are a normal physiological phenomenon. If you have to stay up late, eat ice cream, or sulk to buff it, you deserve to be uncomfortable.

If you really want to prevent problems, regular screening is more effective than any health regimen. Don’t be lazy about this. It is enough for girls under 35 years old to have a breast color ultrasound every year. It is completely unnecessary for young women with high breast density and unclear mammography to take more radiation. Over 35 years old, you can do a combined color ultrasound and mammography screening every 1-2 years. If you have a family history of breast cancer, it is best to do a BRCA gene test in advance. It is more reliable than any number of health care products you buy.

Oh, yes, there is also the question of "whether push-up bras can be worn" that everyone has been arguing about for a long time. There is no standard answer: Western medicine believes that as long as you wear them without tightness and no obvious sense of oppression, it is perfectly fine if you wear them for no more than 8 hours a day. There is no need to buy hundreds of so-called "health care bras";

Don’t touch those breast enhancement products that boast of being amazing. There are currently no formal clinical studies that can prove that externally applied breast enhancement creams and oral administration of kudzu and papaya slices can safely and effectively enlarge breasts. Either they secretly add estrogen, which may lead to endocrine disorders if used for a long time, which can easily lead to breast problems, or they are pure placebos that have no other use than costing money.

Seriously, don't mess with your breasts.

It is not a fragile organ that needs to be "drugged" and "maintained" every day. You don't have to rub it every day, nor do you need to take a bunch of messy supplements. Eat and sleep normally, and don't hold it in when you are angry. Even if you go to a deserted place after get off work to curse a few words or go to the gym to punch a bag for half an hour, remember to get a physical examination every year. It is more effective than any health package worth tens of thousands of dollars.