Self Breast Examination- A Step Towards Self Awareness

Inspecting your body and knowing the way it normally looks and feels should be a habit, especially in females. Breast self-awareness is important as it helps you to become familiar with how your breasts normally look and feel and is significant because it can actually help you detect a lump. Breast self-exam or regularly examining your breasts on your own, is a way to find breast cancer early, when it’s more likely to be treated successfully. While no single test can detect all breast cancers early, it is believed that performing breast self-exam in combination with other screening methods can increase the odds of early detection.

Here are five easy steps to a more effective self-exam:

• Step 1: Looking for differences between your breasts

  Right breast self-examination should be concerned with both the look and feel of breasts. Perform this self-exam with your clothes removed, the look element should be performed while either standing or sitting in front of a mirror. Examine both breasts and look for visible lumps, any unusual differences between the two breasts, dimpling or indentations in the breast tissue, redness, scaliness, or other changes to the skin or nipples that appear abnormal, changes to your nipples, for example a nipple that is newly inverted or pulling in.

• Step 2: Put your hands on your buttocks, pull your elbows forward

  Look for the same changes in the breasts from Step 1 like redness, lumps and indentations — this time with your hands resting on your buttocks while squeezing your elbows forward since this might bring out lumps that might not appear otherwise. Keep your hands on your buttocks and slowly swivel from side to side to catch possible abnormalities from more angles.

  Next, lift and straighten your arms above your head to see if there’s any puckering or dimpling of the skin when you elevate them. When you raise your arms, the mass, if there is one, stays there and the skin pulls in.

• Step 3: Use first three fingers when examining your breasts

  The feel part of the breast self-exam should be done while lying down, with a pillow under your head and your arm resting behind it. Use your right hand to examine the left breast and vice versa. Take the first three fingers — index, middle and ring fingers — and use them to press down around the breast and the area around it, using circular motions. Using three fingers, rather than just one, helps you identify and keeps you from mistaking normal breast tissue for lumps. Increase the pressure you use with each pass around the breasts to ensure you are not just feeling superficial tissue.

• Step 4: Examine the areas around the breast

  After examining your breasts, it is important to perform a check of the areas around them. Continue to use circular motions and increasing pressure, start from the collarbone to the sternum and down below the breast. From the lower part of the breast, travel up to the area under your arm to look for any swelling in the lymph nodes. Something that feels like a pea, or a marble or a walnut will be unusual and should be discussed with your doctor.

• Step 5: Perform the test at the same time each month

  Be sure to carry out the breast self-examination the same time every month. If you are still menstruating, it is recommended to do the exam about seven to 10 days after your menstrual cycle, since at that time there will likely be fewer cycle-related changes in the breast tissue. Women who are postmenopausal can do the exam at any time of the month, as long it should be the same time each month.

  Women who may be at higher-than-normal risk of breast cancer should use the monthly self-exam as an opportunity to get more familiar with their breast tissue. Make it a habit and routine. The more frequently you examine your breasts, the more you will learn about them and the easier it will become for you to tell if something has changed. Try to get in the habit of doing a breast self-examination once a month to familiarize yourself with how your breasts normally look and feel.

Over to you

Over a period of time, there has been some debate over just how valuable breast self-examination is in detecting breast cancer early and increasing the chances of survival. But as they always say, prevention is always better than cure!