Large breasts may seem desirable to those who don’t have them, but women with them may disagree. Significantly large breasts can cause a variety of health risks that can be painful or even life-threatening. Thankfully, reduction mammoplasty can help minimize these dangers.
Large Breasts Are a Health Risk
Large breasts have a surprisingly significant impact on a woman’s physical health. Issues that you may experience include:
- Severe pain: The drag of large breasts on a woman’s body can cause back, neck, and arm pain.
- Headaches: Many women with large breasts experience painful headaches that are hard to manage.
- Spine problems: Large breasts may cause damage or changes to the curve of a woman’s spine.
- Exercise difficulties: The pain of exercising with large breasts keeps many women from working out.
- Weight gain: A lack of exercise may trigger weight gain in women with large breasts.
- Cancer risk: Women with larger breasts often have a higher risk of breast cancer.
One study on this subject found that women with large breasts may have shorter lifespans than those who do not have large breasts.
Reduction Mammoplasty Minimizes Health Problems
These problematic health risks make large breasts a serious concern for many women. Thankfully, you don’t have to live with this problem for any longer than necessary. Mammoplasty can decrease the size of your breasts and provide you with many benefits, including:
- Reduced headaches
- Improved sleep patterns
- Increased ease of breathing
- Lowered musculoskeletal pain
- Decreased risk of breast cancer
- Improved exercise abilities
- Reduced risk of eating disorders
These physical health benefits help make reduction mammoplasty a good choice for a large number of women. This procedure can be performed on women with breasts of any size, though it should probably be done on women with breasts much more substantial than average.
Mammoplasty Has Psychological Benefits
While mammoplasty is primarily beneficial for your physical health, emotional benefits do exist. For example, one study found that a majority of women were pleased with the results of their reduction and reported many improvements in their mental health. These included:
- Increased self-esteem and feelings of self-worth
- Decreased levels of shyness and distress
- Boosted quality of life
- Bettered sex life
Though not every woman was pleased with her mammoplasty procedure, a majority reported these and other benefits. Paired with the boosts in physical health, this procedure may be a wise choice for women who have large breasts.
Reduction Mammoplasty Is a Quick Procedure
Before you get a reduction mammoplasty procedure, you should understand the steps in the process. Thankfully, a reduction mammoplasty is a short procedure — usually no more than a few hours — and is often an outpatient surgery. The steps involved in this procedure include:
- Anesthesia: You can receive either intravenous sedation or general anesthesia during this procedure to avoid pain.
- Incision: The surgeon makes incisions around the areola to open up your breast. These incision lines are kept as small as possible to avoid excessive scarring.
- Adjustments: After the incisions are made on your breast, the surgeon will remove excess tissue from your breast. Then, the remaining tissue is repositioned for increased support.
- Closing: After breast repositioning, the surgeon will close the incisions to tighten up your breasts and make them smaller.
The results of this procedure should be immediately noticeable, though you may experience some swelling for 4-6 weeks after the procedure. Once your incisions are healed, you should experience minimal pain as the swelling disappears.
Let Us Help You
If you have large breasts and want to avoid problems with back pain or cancer risk, please don’t hesitate to contact us at The Plastic Surgery Group right away. We will take a look at your case and work hard to reduce your breasts skillfully and without trouble.