Breast Self Exam
Did you know that you are more likely to find your own breast lumps by doing regular breast self-examination than a doctor or nurse checking your breasts during your annual GYN exam? It's true! Breast self-examination can be a valuable tool in getting to know and understand your body, and your cycle too. Regular self-examination makes you more familiar with your body and more self-aware. You become sensitive to your body's unique characteristics and better able to recognize subtle changes. If you do regular breast self-examination and have menstrual cycles you can begin to distinguish between normal changes you experience in your breast during different times of your menstrual cycle and changes that are not part of the usual pattern. If you do find something unusual you can have it checked by a GYN health practitioner, and by radiation free Thermography.
Self-examination helps you to know your body better than anyone else!
Breast self-examination is easy to learn and can be incorporated in to your bathing or showering routine. Many women have found that it is easiest to feel for breast lumps if their breasts are wet and soapy because their fingers slide more easily over their breasts. One of our clients commented that the breast glands and other structures of her breasts feel more defined when she does breast self-examination in the shower.
Self-examination helps you to know your body better than anyone else!
Breast self-examination is easy to learn and can be incorporated in to your bathing or showering routine. Many women have found that it is easiest to feel for breast lumps if their breasts are wet and soapy because their fingers slide more easily over their breasts. One of our clients commented that the breast glands and other structures of her breasts feel more defined when she does breast self-examination in the shower.
How To Do Breast Self Examination In The Shower
While you are showering put soap on your hands and breasts. Straighten you fingers and hold them together like a paddle. This helps you to feel larger areas of your breast tissue with several fingers all at once. Press you fingers firmly against your breast tissue and slowly slide them from one part of your breast to another without lifting your fingers. This helps prevent missing any spots.
You want to feel everywhere your breast tissue grows. One method is to slide your fingers in a methodically pattern up and down covering your whole breast as shown by the arrows in the illustration. Be sure to feel all the way up and along your both sides of your collarbone and into your armpit where there can also be breast tissue and lymph nodes (little kidney bean shaped nodes beneath the skin that can also be affected by breast cancer). You also want to feel down below your breasts where they meet the ribs and across you breast bone in the middle of your chest.
Compare one breast to the other. Breast tissue tends to have an overall nodular texture. One woman commented that the texture it is sort of like feeling corrugated cardboard beneath folds of a thick blanket. You are looking for a lump that was not there before, or a lump that stands out from the nodular texture of your breasts that does not match anything in the opposite breast. Breast cysts, which are common and usually not a health problem, tend to feel like a smooth movable bath oil bead under the skin.
Tumors tend to feel hard and irregular and don't move around, as if they are attached to something. They have been compared to the texture and hardness of a dried pea, or a clump of frozen peas stuck together. Many women find their breasts can be very lumpy during the weeks before and during their periods due to premenstrual fluid retention in the breast glands. These lumps typically get smaller or go away once the period is over and are usually not a concern. Tumors, typically, do not just go away and tend to get gradually bigger. If you find a suspicious breast lump a GYN health practitioner should check it out.
Squeeze the nipples to look for secretions. It is normal for some women to occasionally have pale yellow, white watery secretions from the nipple even if they have not recently had a baby. If secretions are green or bloody or continuous without explanation a GYN health practitioner should check you.
Larger breasted women often find it easier to feel their breasts lying on their back rather than standing in a shower. The breast tissue flattens out on the chest more this way making it easier to try to feel though all the layers of breast tissue.
While you are showering put soap on your hands and breasts. Straighten you fingers and hold them together like a paddle. This helps you to feel larger areas of your breast tissue with several fingers all at once. Press you fingers firmly against your breast tissue and slowly slide them from one part of your breast to another without lifting your fingers. This helps prevent missing any spots.
You want to feel everywhere your breast tissue grows. One method is to slide your fingers in a methodically pattern up and down covering your whole breast as shown by the arrows in the illustration. Be sure to feel all the way up and along your both sides of your collarbone and into your armpit where there can also be breast tissue and lymph nodes (little kidney bean shaped nodes beneath the skin that can also be affected by breast cancer). You also want to feel down below your breasts where they meet the ribs and across you breast bone in the middle of your chest.
Compare one breast to the other. Breast tissue tends to have an overall nodular texture. One woman commented that the texture it is sort of like feeling corrugated cardboard beneath folds of a thick blanket. You are looking for a lump that was not there before, or a lump that stands out from the nodular texture of your breasts that does not match anything in the opposite breast. Breast cysts, which are common and usually not a health problem, tend to feel like a smooth movable bath oil bead under the skin.
Tumors tend to feel hard and irregular and don't move around, as if they are attached to something. They have been compared to the texture and hardness of a dried pea, or a clump of frozen peas stuck together. Many women find their breasts can be very lumpy during the weeks before and during their periods due to premenstrual fluid retention in the breast glands. These lumps typically get smaller or go away once the period is over and are usually not a concern. Tumors, typically, do not just go away and tend to get gradually bigger. If you find a suspicious breast lump a GYN health practitioner should check it out.
Squeeze the nipples to look for secretions. It is normal for some women to occasionally have pale yellow, white watery secretions from the nipple even if they have not recently had a baby. If secretions are green or bloody or continuous without explanation a GYN health practitioner should check you.
Larger breasted women often find it easier to feel their breasts lying on their back rather than standing in a shower. The breast tissue flattens out on the chest more this way making it easier to try to feel though all the layers of breast tissue.