Are there times in your cycle where you become more aware of your breasts because of pain, tenderness or swelling?

Perhaps it’s at this point that you’re desperate for your period to arrive, you avoid hugging people or you become strategic with your clothing choices.

We get it.

Put simply, breast tenderness can be a sign that your sex hormones are out of balance, meaning you might have an imbalance between optimal levels of estrogen and progesterone at various stages of your cycle, most commonly in the lead up to your period. It can also indicate that your needs for certain trace minerals aren’t being met.

The good news is, this is often easily correctable when you give the body the right nutrients—specifically, iodine.

Why does breast pain happen?

To understand why breast pain occurs, there are a few important bits and pieces you need to know. Firstly, just like almost all of the cells in your body, the cells that make up breast tissue are in a constant cycle of growing and dying. When that delicate balance is well maintained, there’s no problem. But if the growth rate exceeds the death rate, it can lead to excessive breast tissue—hello discomfort. Couple that with the fact that breast tissue contains lots of estrogen receptors and, it being common these days for women to have an excess of estrogen (typically in the lead up to menstruation), you can easily experience this double whammy effect driving tenderness, pain and / or congestion.

Iodine assists breast tissue by promoting healthy estrogen metabolism and detoxification. This means estrogen that your body is finished with can be safely eliminated, rather than more concerning forms of estrogen being created from ‘old’ estrogen. Iodine also helps by turning down the volume on estrogen-responsive genes—all of which contributes to less breast tenderness and swelling.

One other factor to consider when it comes to breast tenderness is caffeine. Its regular, over-consumption (which for some women is two cups of coffee per day) has been linked to breast pain so reflect on your caffeine consumption. If your breast pain has worsened following an increase in your caffeine intake, then you might like to reduce this and notice if it makes a difference.

Dr Libby recently answered a question in regards to breast tenderness from one of the students in her online course, if you’d like to hear the answer, listen here:

Dr LibbyDr Libby answers a question on Breast Tenderness

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