Breast Pain Breast pain is also known as mastalgia, this pain has affected at least 70% of women at one time or the other during their lives.
There are several reasons why breast pain or mastalgia might occur. These reasons include change in hormonal levels either during menstrual periods or before periods.
Most of the time women in pre menstrual age are affected with breast pain. Most of the women suffer with breast pain which is milk to moderate, for some breast pain may be severe which might affect their day to day working.
There are two types of breast pains, firstly cyclic breast pain, which affects the complete breast in both breasts and another one is non-cyclic breast pain occurs in one breasts and the pain is in one area of the breast. Cyclic breast pain is more often in young women between ages 30-40 whereas non cyclic pain is only in women in menopausal age.
Doctors have not been able to establish breast pain in women in most cases, however, it is now being deduced that the breast pain is because of hormonal activity, since most of the times pain disappears after pregnancy, or periods or after menopause. Only non-cyclic breast pain can be connected to reasons that are connected to some or the other underlying health problem.
The causes of breast pain in these cases maybe due to breast cysts, breast surgery, breast injury, sometimes the pain might be in the chest area but might seem as breast pain. There are some absolutely normal causes of breast pain, these are breast feeding or nursing, due to hormonal changes during pregnancy, infection to or in breasts or injury to breasts.
This type of pain usually goes and comes back and goes again, it is rarely persistent, this pain may occur during or before period and may disappear after these are over, however it is important that you talk to the doctor if you find that the breast pain is persistent, since there is a possibility that there is a reason behind the breast pain. Doctor’s help maybe required if the pain is persistent. There are some tests the doctor might require you to undergo before arriving at a conclusion, these tests are a sonogram and a mammogram, especially if you are above 30-40 years of age, not just this the doctor may require you to give a detail regarding the pain, as to when you experienced the pain, for how long and the exact location of pain, as well as the intensity of pain.
Breast pain might not be serious always, but persistent and severe breast pain should be investigated. |
