Menopause Symptoms - Breast Pain
One of the common complaints during menopause is breast pain, which can significantly affect your daily routine.
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Breast pain just before and during menopause is often linked to hormonal changes. As estrogen and progesterone levels fluctuate, breast tissue can become more sensitive, leading to pain or discomfort.
While this can present as simple breast tenderness in a younger woman, usually any aching, throbbing or sharp pain in a woman in her middle adult years is related to the onset of menopause. This sensation can be persistent or occur sporadically and can vary in intensity as your menopause progresses.
During perimenopause and leading into menopause, the tenderness tends to change quickly into the sharp pain or throbbing type of discomfort and these changes will be noticed by you. The changes in the levels of estrogen and progesterone are responsible for the menopausal type of breast pain which you may experience. During the process of decreasing hormones in menopause, the levels can fluctuate while they decrease, leading to spikes and inconsistent levels which cause this pain.
Once you have passed through the early stages of menopause, this pain will slowly subside and disappear. Breast Pain is often denoted as one of the more prominent side effects of menopause, along with hot flashes, weight gain and mood swings.
As taking additional estrogen and progesterone can be one of the causes of these spikes in your hormonal levels causing this pain, you may wish to take a break for a short time from supplementing with additional hormones. However, as your menopause proceeds and your breasts pain alleviates you will find yourself back reaching for the additional hormones to assist youwith coping with the other symptoms of menopause. Luckily, it is about this time that your breast pain will begin to naturally improve due to the onset of proper menopause.
Additionally, as we lose estrogen the quality of the supportive connective tissue in our breast decreases leading to our breasts lowering or “sagging” in our middle years. Therefore you might find that you require additional support from your bra to stop them from feeling tender and uncomfortable due to the lowering connective tissue quality and the sagging effect.
Most women find that analgesics or other over the counter and natural pain relief medications reduce any of this type of pain while at the initial stages of menopause.
Other practical suggestions for managing breast pain include:
- Increasing your levels of Vitamin D, E and B6. Vitamin D moderates breast cell growth and can help your body's overall function, Vitamin E has antioxidant properties and Vitamin B6 is also known to improve general breast health.
- Limit sodium as salt can cause fluid retention, which could also be the cause of your breast pain.
- Limit or avoid caffeine, especially if your symptoms are flaring up. Caffeine is known to increase inflammation which in turn could be contributing to your breast pain.
- Supplementing with evening primrose oil, which contains omega-6 fatty acids. Fatty acid imbalance has been linked to breast pain so can assist in bringing the acid balance back into line, in turn decreasing some of the pain associated with any acidic issues within your breasts.
- Apply a warm compress to soothe and relax breast tissue.
- Maintain a healthy diet to support overall hormonal balance.
- Practice relaxation techniques to manage stress, as stress is known to also worsen breast pain while also being a common characteristic of menopausal.
It is a personal decision as to whether you want to reach for medications to assist with relieving the symptoms or if you wish to take supplements instead to promote natural pain relief. Sometimes, a combination of techniques and approaches will work better for your body so don’t hesitate to experiment with some of the supplements on the market which specifically target breast health and always remember that this is a temporary side effect of menopause and will improve substantially with time.
It is also important to remember that if your pain is severe, persistent, accompanied by other unusual symptoms such as any breast discharge or not linked to menopause then you must seek further medical advice. However, if you are entering early menopause then breast pain and aching is a very normal side effect which will subside with time.
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