Dense breasts have mostly glandular tissue, with just a little fat tissue. A woman's breast density can change through her life.
Your breast tissue tends to become less dense as you age, though some women may have dense breast tissue at any age. Have a lower body mass index. Women with less body fat are more likely to have more dense breast tissue compared with women who are obese. Take hormone therapy for menopause.
"Dense breasts are more common in younger women, and most women experience a sharp decline [in breast density] during menopause that continues in the postmenopausal period," she added. "However, postmenopausal estrogen and progestin [hormone] therapy can reverse the decline of breast density with age."
What factors influence breast density. Breast density is often inherited, but other factors can influence it. Factors associated with higher breast density include using menopausal hormone therapy and having a low body mass index. Factors associated with lower breast density include increasing age and having children.
In general, breasts tend to become less dense as women get older, especially after menopause when the glandular tissue atrophies and the breast may appear to have more fat.
Roughly half of women ages 40 to 74 have dense breasts. The breasts of aging women become less dense over time, although nearly a third of all women age 65 and older still have dense breasts, Braithwaite said. The USPSTF recommends a mammogram every two years for women in the 50 to 74 age group.
Fat content in what you eat and exercise do not directly change breast density. But if you lose or gain a lot of weight, your breasts can look more or less dense on your mammogram – though the amount of dense tissue will stay the same.
However, women with dense breasts can consider following a dense breast tissue diet, which can help decrease breast density and have healthy breasts. We recommend: Eliminating caffeine. Decreasing or eliminating red meat.
If you have dense breast tissue and are at an increased risk of breast cancer due to a genetic mutation or other factors, your care team may recommend alternating MRIs and mammograms every six months. “That way we'll be sure to catch any abnormalities as early as possible,” Cohen says.
Breast density is a measure of how much fibrous and glandular tissue (also known as fibroglandular tissue) there is in your breast, as compared to fat tissue. It isn't related to breast size or firmness. Breasts are made up of lobules, ducts, and fatty and fibrous connective tissue.
One out of every two women age 40 and over has dense breast tissue and all women experience changes in their breast density as they get older. What is breast density? “Breast density describes how much fatty tissue versus fibroglandular (glandular and connective) tissue is in a woman's breasts,” says Dr.
The breasts are almost entirely fatty (about 10% of women). A few areas of dense tissue are scattered through the breasts (about 40% of women). The breasts are evenly dense throughout (about 40% of women).
Studies suggest that vitamin D may reduce breast cancer risk and dietary vitamin D intake has been associated with reduced breast density.
Women who follow a regular Western diet of high-fat dairy products, red meat consumption, and high-sugar foods are at greater risk of maintaining dense breast tissue and are more inclined to develop breast cancer.
“Breast density has nothing to do with how your breasts look or feel,” Dr. Musser explains. “It does not affect the fit of bras and swimming suits or determine the degree of sagging a woman experiences with age. It is an assessment based on the mammographic appearance of your breast tissue.”
If you're one of the many women with dense breast tissue, you'll need to get extra familiar with your breasts in monthly self-exams. That's because dense tissue can feel fibrous or lumpy compared with fattier tissue, and detecting an abnormal spot can be trickier.
Women diagnosed with dense breasts should continue to get regular screening mammograms. But there are additional screening tests that can help doctors detect tumors that may not be identified by conventional mammography or DBT: Breast ultrasound (whole-breast ultrasound).
Level of physical activity does not correlate with breast density.
Breast density has nothing to do with firmness or size, Friedlander says. “Dense breasts are not something that you can notice or that your doctor can feel on physical examination. It's a designation purely defined by what your mammogram pictures look like.”
But, if you're finding the opposite, that's also completely normal. The main reasons why women's breasts get bigger as they get older are: Weight gain or weight redistribution. Fluctuating hormone levels due to menopause.
Combination of higher intakes of vitamin D and calcium (≥100 IU/d and ≥750 mg/d, respectively) were associated with a reduction of breast densities (OR, 0.28; 95% confidence interval, 0.15–0.54) compared with those consuming <100 IU/d and <750 mg/d.
Going through menopause is associated with a decrease in both percent density and dense area. Owing to an increase in the nondense tissue, the decrease in percent density is largest in women who gain weight.
Dense breast tissue can only be seen on a mammogram. While fatty tissue appears dark on a mammogram, dense tissue appears white. For about half of women, screening mammograms reveal they have breast tissue that is categorized as dense.