Dense breasts are common and normal, occurring in approximately one third of women over 50 years. Dense breasts are very common in younger women (aged less than 50 years) and for many, breast density decreases as women get older. For example, only about 25 percent of women aged 60 and older have dense breasts.
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.
Breast density reflects the amount of fibrous and glandular tissue in a woman's breasts compared with the amount of fatty tissue in the breasts, as seen on a mammogram. 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).
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 only way to know if you have dense breasts is through a mammogram report, delivered by your radiologist. Your report should also reveal your level of breast density: Level 1: Your breasts are all fatty tissue. Level 2: You may have some dense breast tissue, but most of your tissue is fatty.
Extremely dense indicates that nearly all of the breast tissue is dense. About 1 in 10 women has this result.
The perkier and firmer your breasts feel, the more dense they may be, but there are ligaments and other tissues that cause hardness or lumps that are unrelated to the amount of fibrous tissue.
It's the density that matters most, since the more connective and milk duct tissue there is, the higher the risk of developing cancer. The size of your breasts has no impact on the density or vice versa.
How Can Losing Weight Change Your Mammogram? Breast density is directly affected by weight loss. If you are losing fatty tissue in your breasts, you will have increased breast density since there is less fatty tissue compared to glandular tissues. Denser breasts are linked to a higher risk of breast cancer.
Dense breasts are especially common in women who are younger or have smaller breasts. “That's why we don't usually recommend that 20-year-olds have mammograms,” Czerniecki says.
No — breast density is determined by genetics, age, menopause status and family history. Weight gain and certain medications can also influence your breast density. Though your breast density can't be changed, information is power.
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.
While exercise can decrease the amount of fat in the breast, the glandular or dense breast tissue is not affected by exercise. So, if a woman loses a lot of weight due to exercise, her breasts can appear more dense due to loss of fat (the amount of fat decreases while the amount of dense tissue remains the same) [1].
The odds of having dense breasts were 29% higher (OR, 1.29; 95% CI, 1.14-1.45) among women with 1 family member with FHBC, but were not statistically significantly higher among women with 2 or more family members with FHBC (OR, 1.38; 95% CI, 0.85-2.23).
"We know that omega-3s help decrease inflammation in the body," she says. "You can also eat walnuts and seeds if you want a non-animal source." And just like olive oil, eating more omega-3s may also be linked to a reduction in breast density, according to a 2014 study in Cancer Causes & Control.
The dense glandular tissue will look white, and fatty tissue will look dark on your mammogram. The more white areas the radiologist sees on the image, the denser your breast.
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.
Breast density for each woman was measured with mammography. They found that women who followed more of a Western diet, including consumption of high-fat dairy products, processed meats, refined grains, sweets and sweetened drinks, fast foods, and sauces, were more likely to have high breast density.
Knowing whether or not you have dense breast tissue is important, because it makes breast cancer screening more difficult, and it increases your risk of breast cancer. Since you can't see or feel to know if you have dense breasts on your own, it's important to get screened via a diagnostic mammogram.
Breast density is not a static trait. Breast density changes with age, for example. On average, older women have lower density breast tissue than do younger women. The greatest change in density occurs during the menopause years.
The firmness of the breasts is due to the elasticity of the skin. If the skin becomes slack, the breasts will become less firm. But this does not affect breast density. The breasts are made up of different tissues: glandular, connective or fatty (also called adipose tissue).
No. Breast pain or tenderness is not related to breast density. Breast pain that comes and goes is often because of changes in hormones due to your period and is most common on the sides of your breasts (near your arms and underarms).
Pettersson and colleagues [1] report that the greater the non-dense breast area (regardless of the dense breast area), the lower the breast cancer risk. In other words, fatty breasts have a protective effect on breast cancer risk.
Radiologists use mammogram images to grade breast tissue based on the proportion of dense to nondense tissue. According to the BI-RADS reporting system, the levels are (from left to right) almost entirely fatty, scattered areas of fibroglandular density, heterogeneously dense and extremely dense.
Dense breasts are more common in both young women and lean women [118-119]: About 50% to 60% of women ages 40-44 have dense breasts, compared to 20% to 30% of women ages 70-74. About 50% to 60% of women with a healthy weight have dense breasts, compared to 20% to 30% of obese women.