Herbal Health

The breasts (also called mammae or mammary glands) are organs that produce milk to nourish newborn babies until they are old enough to get their nutrition from other foods. In humans they also have psychological and social significance as symbols of femininity and as a source of sexual pleasure.

Breast development

At around the age of 10 or 11 the nipple enlarges; the areola may darken and fat begins to accumulate under it, causing it to bulge. In boys this is all that happens, but in girls the breast continues to develop under the influence of hormones (oestrogen and progesterone) produced by the ovaries. Oestrogen stimulates the milk ducts to grow inwards into the tissue beneath and around the areola, where they divide into increasingly smaller ducts lined with special cells. These are the milk glands. At the same time fat is laid down around the developing glands and the breasts protrude more and more. The breast isn’t a symmetrical cone of tissue beneath the nipple; it has a tail that extends up into the armpit, which develops in the same way as the rest of the breast.

Breast size

A woman’s breasts continue to grow until about 17 or 18 years of age. It is the amount and arrangement of fat laid down in our breasts that determines their final shape and size. This, together with the size, shape and colour of the nipple and areola and the position of the breast on the chest wall, are inherited characteristics that account for every woman’s breasts being a bit different. Breasts may be large or small, conical or rounded, high or low and everything in between.

Nipples

Nipples can vary just as much. They may be flat-topped, divided into two or more lobes at the tip, pointed, knobby (thicker at the top than at the base); they may protrude a little or a lot, or they may be inturned (inverted) and look more like a dimple. The areola may range from very pale pink to dark brown, may be a small or wide circle or oval, and it may not be symmetrical. All these variations are normal and don’t affect the ability to breastfeed.

No doubt you’ve noticed that your nipples and areolae look and feel different from time to time. As well as having a rich nerve supply (that makes them very sensitive), they contain many small blood vessels and tiny bundles of muscle tissue arranged in circles around the areola and radiating from the tip of the nipple to the outer border of the areola. In response to touch, cold and sexual arousal, the muscle contracts so that at first the areola becomes smaller and wrinkled and the nipple protrudes further (and inverted nipples usually emerge). Then the blood vessels become engorged so that the nipple and areola become swollen and warmer. This response helps during breast feeding by enabling the baby to get a good grip on the source of milk.

Though the greatest changes in breasts happen during puberty, further changes continue throughout life. Our breasts may become larger before periods, during pregnancy and breast-feeding, and with weight gain. Breasts may become smaller with weight loss, after breast-feeding and after the menopause.

How you feel about your breasts

Many women don’t like their breasts -they’re too big or too small, not firm enough, the nipples are the wrong colour or shape. Because our society focuses so much on women’s breasts as sex symbols, women may think they are less attractive because of their breasts. But the ‘ideal’ varies depending on whether you’re reading Penthouse or a high-fashion magazine, or whether you see Elle Macpherson or Mia Farrow as the model of an attractive woman. Society’s (and our own) attitudes to women and our breasts can affect how we feel about our bodies and our confidence in how others see us, and perhaps explain why breast problems and breast disease are more frightening to most of us than other health disorders.

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We’re always hearing about stress these days. It’s nothing new. People have always lived with things that worry them. But it could be argued that the pace and competitiveness of living today adds a new dimension to stress, and it affects more people.

We’ve always known that worries and emotional upsets can affect our physical well-being. A cut finger that you forget about when you’re busy or enjoying yourself will start to throb when you get into bed and start worrying about meeting your mortgage repayments, and a quarrel can play havoc with your appetite and digestion.

Why stress makes you feel ill

Our emotions affect our physical health through our unconscious nervous systems and reflex responses, which control everything that happens in our bodies except voluntary movement and conscious thought. The unconscious nervous system has two parts, the sympathetic system that prepares us to escape from threats (the ‘fight or flight’ response) and the parasympathetic system, which keeps things like breathing, circulation and digestion chugging away while we get on with other things. In health these two systems work in harmony and balance.

Everyone knows the ‘fight or flight’ reaction: you see a bus bearing down on you and you feel a rush of adrenalin that makes your heart and breathing rates quicken, your mouth go dry, your muscles tense for action, your skin go pale and cold because most of its blood flow is diverted to muscles, digestion just about stops and all your attention is focused on escaping the danger. As soon as you’ve dashed to safety, the adrenalin subsides and balance returns. The purpose of the ‘fight or flight’ reaction is to protect you from immediate physical dangers. When the reaction is prolonged because the threat (physical or emotional) continues and there’s no safe ending in sight, constant excess adrenalin in the blood really upsets the balance of your unconscious nervous system and plays havoc with your health.

Not all stress is bad

Being under pressure isn’t necessarily ‘bad’ stress. Pressure can be stimulating and exciting, motivating us to think clearly and creatively and to achieve things quickly and effectively. If pressure works in this way, it is a useful and healthy form of stress. But when pressure goes on and on and you can’t handle it, it makes you feel terrible. You become overwhelmed with worries; you can’t think clearly or act decisively, you lose confidence and hope and you feel ill. This is a type of anxiety, which broadly speaking is fear and uncertainty about how things will turn out.

Since the mid-1970s, jogging has become a popular craze in the quest for fitness. Panting, sweaty joggers of all ages are everywhere, pounding along or intend counting their pulses. I have even seen an elderly, white-haired man jogging along the median strip of a busy Sydney highway during peak traffic! As an occasional jogger, I agree that there’s nothing quite like the elation that comes after a good run – it makes the whole day go better. However, these days the medical journals often question the wisdom of jogging and describe some of the problems that can result from it.

Jogging is excellent aerobic exercise but, in contrast to walking, it can aggravate some orthopaedic problems. For some of us (especially older people) jogging can put too much strain on the joints of our feet, knees, hips and spine. Consult your doctor or physiotherapist before you take up jogging if you have lower-back problems, any problems in the bones, muscles or joints of the feet or legs, or if you are obese.

Walking is now recommended as an alternative. Research is just beginning to show which types of walking are most effective in enhancing fitness. Brisk walking is as good or better at burning up energy than jogging, but has less impact on feet and lower limbs, thus reducing the risk of injuries.

We should say something here about the mystique of the hymen and virginity. Throughout history, many societies have held the unbroken hymen as a symbol of virginity and chastity (the English common name for the hymen is the ‘maidenhead’ – a telling term). The hymen was believed to be a tough, protective barrier to a young woman’s sacred and mysterious internal reproductive organs, which had to be ‘torn’ or ‘overcome’ (this was called ‘deflowering’) during her first experience of sexual intercourse, something that most societies expected should happen only in the bridal bed. Deflowering of a virgin was thought always to hurt terribly and bleed copiously.

In some societies wedding guests waited outside the bridal chamber for the cry of pain and then thronged in to inspect the sheets for the blood that signified the bride’s premarital chastity. Parents of the bride, eager that this part of the ceremony should provoke no question about their daughter’s chaste reputation, often provided the bride with a small bottle of animal or bird blood, just in case.

It is now known that an untorn hymen is not an infallible sign of virginity. The opening in the hymen may be big enough or may stretch enough to allow entry of the penis without tearing. Most doctors and midwives have seen at least one first pregnancy in a woman with an unbroken hymen. On the other hand, a torn hymen is not always evidence that a woman has had sexual intercourse. Some women are born with a hymen so incomplete that it appears torn, or it may be broken by injury or during medical procedures.

How and where we store fat in our bodies is decided, before we are born, by the formation of layers of tissue (called adipose tissue). This tissue consists of a fibrous framework containing fat cells that store fat: this is their special purpose.

When we take in more kilojoules than are needed to supply energy, the excess is stored as fat in the special cells of adipose tissue, which expand by accumulating fat droplets inside their cell membranes. The layers of adipose tissue become thicker as more fat is stored in its cells. When our food intake supplies less energy than we need, stored fat is released from fat cells to be converted to energy, and adipose tissue layers become thinner.

Fat can be stored only in adipose tissue, which is present under the skin, beneath and between the layers of the membrane that line the abdominal cavity, and around some of the internal organs, including the kidneys and heart. There are two types of adipose tissue. In one (let’s call it type I) the fat cells are distributed evenly throughout the tissue framework and as the cells are expanded by fat storage, the tissue enlarges evenly. When fat stores are used up, fat tends to be lost early from this tissue. Type I fat storage is predominant beneath the skin of the abdomen, upper trunk and neck.

In the other type (we’ll call it type II) fibrous strands in the framework divide the tissue into compartments that tend to bulge as more fat is stored, giving a dimpled appearance to the overylying skin. This type of adipose tissue is sometimes called ‘cellulite’, and it is most likely to be found in localised pads on the buttocks, hips and thighs, especially in women. Type II fat is the last to go when weight is lost. In general, it tends to be independent of overall body weight: many women retain their ‘jodhpur hips’ when they are quite slender elsewhere. It would probably take an unhealthy weight loss to shift all this fat.