Breast health knowledge collection

Clinical data shows that 90% of breast tenderness, nodules, and hyperplasia are benign lesions and will not develop into breast cancer. As long as ordinary healthy women do "self-examination once a month + routine screening once a year + stay away from clear cancer risks", more than 95% of breast health protection needs can be covered without excessive anxiety.

To be honest, I have been a volunteer in the Breast Department of a tertiary hospital for two years. The most common thing I have seen is a little girl in her early twenties who cried while clutching her physical examination report. The report said "breast hyperplasia" and "BI-RADS type 2 nodules". I felt that I was going to get cancer. I browsed Baidu all night, and I almost thought about my funeral. Last time I met a 22-year-old girl who had been through the postgraduate entrance examination for more than half a year. The pain before menstruation was so bad that she couldn't even put on underwear. She pinched her breasts and felt several "hard lumps". She was so scared that she didn't even prepare for the first test. When she came to the clinic for a color ultrasound, it was ordinary physiological hyperplasia. The doctor didn't even prescribe any medicine. She just told her to go back and drink less iced milk tea and stay up late. She shouldn't eat spicy food before her menstruation, and she would just come back for a review in half a year.

As for whether breast hyperplasia should be treated, there is a lot of quarrel on the Internet. Some people selling health products say that the hyperplasia is a "precancerous lesion" and should be treated immediately, while others say that the hyperplasia should not be treated at all. The current mainstream clinical consensus is actually very clear: as long as there is swelling and pain before menstruation and obvious relief after menstruation, and the nodules do not rapidly become larger and harder in a short period of time (1-3 months), it is considered physiological hyperplasia, and there is no need to take medicine at all, and there is no need to do so-called "knot-removing massage". Don’t believe it, I received a 30-year-old patient last month. I went to a beauty salon to apply for a breast massage card worth more than 20,000 yuan. They said that the nodules would disappear after six months of massage. However, after three months of massage, the nodules did not disappear. Instead, they caused subcutaneous bleeding. The originally stable benign nodules were stimulated and grew in size in just two months. In the end, they could only be removed through minimally invasive surgery.

Many people say that they don’t know how to self-examine themselves because they are afraid of not being sure. In fact, they are not as meticulous as those taught online. They can do it easily while taking a shower. After applying the shower gel, place your hands flat on the breasts, start from the nipple and slowly move around in circles, and do not pinch with your fingers - many people pinch the normal breast lobules and treat them as nodules, purely to scare themselves. If you really feel a small lump that is hard to the touch, has unclear boundaries, and does not hurt when you press it, don’t panic. Write down the location first, and touch it again 3 days after your period. If it is still there, just go to the hospital for a breast surgery checkup. There is no need to lose sleep that night.

As for the screening items that everyone is most confused about, don’t just ask for the most expensive ones. When I was sorting out cases before, I saw many girls in their early 20s who asked for mammography as soon as they arrived, saying that the mammography could see clearly, but in fact it was completely unnecessary. The breast tissue of young women is relatively dense, and the mammography target cannot penetrate it at all, so it is impossible to detect accurately even if it is a waste of radiation. If you are under 35 years old, it is enough to do more than 100 breast color Doppler ultrasounds every year. If you are over 40 years old, you should consider alternating color Doppler ultrasound and mammography. If first-degree relatives such as mothers and sisters have a history of breast cancer, they can start regular screening 10 years in advance. This is a unified recommendation in the guidelines of China, the United States and Europe, and there is no controversy.

Speaking of risk factors, those that have been confirmed to increase the risk of breast cancer should be avoided if possible: for example, menarche earlier than 12 years old, menopause later than 55 years old, first childbirth over 35 years old, long-term use of breast enhancement drugs/anti-aging health products with unknown ingredients (many of which secretly add exogenous estrogen), long-term alcohol abuse, BMI over 28, especially those with waist and abdominal obesity, these are clear high-risk factors. As for the controversial points that have been quarreling on the Internet for many years, let me explain them clearly to everyone:

For example, will drinking soy milk stimulate breast glands? There were indeed small sample studies before that mentioned that soy isoflavones are phytoestrogens and may have an impact. However, follow-up studies of hundreds of thousands of samples in recent years have long confirmed that drinking about 300ml of soy milk every day will not increase the risk of breast cancer, but will have a protective effect on the breast. If you are afraid, just don’t take extra soy isoflavone supplements.

Will wearing underwired bras cause cancer? There are currently no clinical studies that can prove this statement, but if the underwear is too tight and worn for more than 12 hours a day, it will indeed aggravate the swelling and pain of hyperplasia, so make it as comfortable as you want. You don’t have to wear it at home. There is no need to squeeze your breasts to shape your body. You will be the one who suffers.

Oh, by the way, don’t think that breast cancer is exclusive to women. Men can also get it, accounting for about 1% of all breast cancer cases. I once met a brother in his 40s who felt that his breasts were so painful that he was too embarrassed to come for a checkup.

In fact, after all, breasts are a typical "emotional organ". The more anxious you are, the more sulky you are, and the more you stare at them every day wondering if there is anything wrong, the more likely they are to swell and ache. Buy less IQ-taxed loose knot tea and breast enlargement devices, stay up less late, be less angry, and have regular check-ups, which are more effective than any health care products. Go to the hospital if you feel really uncomfortable. Don't go to Baidu to see a doctor yourself. Baidu's content can tell you that you only have half a year to live if you are not sick. You can't do it.