Pain when pressing around the breast

Breast disease is a type of disease that poses a great threat to women's health today. One of its biggest characteristics is the occurrence of pain. Therefore, when abnormal breast pain occurs, women will pay attention to it. There are many types of breast pain, some of which are continuous pain and some of which are intermittent pain. The characteristics of the pain are different and the possible causes are also different. So, why does it hurt when pressing around the breasts?

1. Breast pain during adolescence: The earliest breast pain in girls usually occurs between the ages of 9 and 13. At this time, girls' breasts begin to develop, with the nipples first bulging and a slight feeling of pain. After menarche, it will disappear on its own as the breasts mature during puberty.

2. Premenstrual breast pain: Many women experience fullness, hardness, and tenderness in the breasts during menstruation. In severe cases, the breasts may become swollen and painful even with slight vibrations or collisions, and the original granules or nodules may become more obvious. This is caused by increased estrogen levels in the body before menstruation, breast hyperplasia, and edema of the breast interstitial tissue. After the menstrual period, the above changes disappear.

3. Breast tenderness during pregnancy: Some women experience breast tenderness around 40 days of pregnancy due to changes in estrogen levels in the body, which causes breast hyperplasia and breast enlargement. In severe cases, the pain may last throughout the pregnancy and no treatment is required.

4. Postpartum breast tenderness: Breast tenderness, lumps and pain may often occur 3 to 7 days after delivery. This is mainly caused by breast lymph retention, venous congestion, interstitial edema and obstruction of mammary ducts. Prevention and treatment methods: Mothers should breastfeed as early as possible; if there are nodules, apply hot compresses and massage the nodules before breastfeeding; you can also use a breast pump to extract milk to promote patency of the mammary ducts.

5. Breast pain after artificial abortion: After artificial abortion, some women complain of breast pain and can feel a lump. This is due to the sudden interruption of pregnancy; the hormone level in the body drops sharply, causing the newly developed mammary gland to suddenly stop growing, resulting in breast lumps and breast pain.

6. Breast pain after sexual intercourse: This is related to the physiological changes in the breasts during sexual intercourse. People with low libido or an disharmonious sex life cannot achieve sexual satisfaction, so the congestion and swelling of the breasts are not easy to subside, or they subside incompletely. Continuous congestion will cause breast pain.

7. Breast cancer: It is common in women aged 20 to 40 and has a slow course of disease. In the early stage, there is one or several nodules in the breast, which are painless or tender, have unclear boundaries with surrounding tissues, are often adhered to the skin, and the axillary lymph nodes on the same side may be enlarged. Clinically, there is no fever. After the pus mass softens, it forms a cold abscess; it can penetrate the skin to form a fistula or sinus tract, and discharge thin pus with cheesy debris. In a few patients, the lumps become hard lumps through fibrosis, which changes the shape of the breast and causes the nipple to retract, making it difficult to distinguish from breast cancer.

8. During examination, diffuse thickening of the breasts on both sides may be found, which appears in the form of flaky, granular or nodules, and the boundary between the thickened area and the surrounding breast tissue is not obvious; sometimes the two sides may be asymmetrical. The above findings are often more obvious before menstruation and soften or disappear after menstruation. When cysts are formed, multiple cystic nodules of varying sizes can be felt in the breast. There is some controversy about the relationship between lobular hyperplasia of the breast and breast cancer, but most scholars believe that more than 90% of lobular hyperplasia is a physiological change caused by endocrine imbalance, and its essence is neither inflammation nor tumor, nor precancerous lesions.