Breast Health Before and After Surgery

Phoenix and Glendale, Arizona

Healthy breasts are beautiful breasts. We urge our Phoenix breast enhancement patients to take good care of their breasts to ensure the best results from breast surgery. Here are a few tips to help you ensure breast health throughout your life.

General Health

Many things that are damaging to your general health can also adversely affect your breasts. A healthy diet and regular exercise will go a long way to keeping your breasts healthy. Stress, on the other hand, can be bad for you and bad for your breasts. One of the worst things for your breasts is yo-yo dieting. When you gain and lose weight, your breasts will grow and shrink accordingly, which can reduce skin elasticity and breast fullness.

Quit Smoking

We hate to add another voice to the chorus of people saying smoking is bad for you, but the truth is that smoking is not only bad for your lungs--it's bad for your breasts. Studies have shown that women who smoke are more likely to suffer serious breast ptosis (sagging) at a younger age, requiring a breast lift. In addition, smoking increases your risk of complications from your breast augmentation, may slow healing, and reduce the length of your great results.

Treat Your Skin Right

Healthy skin is an important part of great-looking breasts. Not only will good-looking skin help your breasts to look their best, but the skin is an important part of the support system for your breasts. Maintaining skin elasticity will reduce the likelihood that you need a breast lift later and improve the life of your breast augmentation results.

Our skin care treatments are not just for the face! We can maintain health in and help revitalize your breasts' skin, too. And we remind you to use sunscreen for your décolleté whenever you wear a low-cut dress, shirt, or blouse.

Support Structures

Gravity is hard on breasts. It is a remarkable feat of evolutionary engineering that they're able to be out there at all, and when gravity pulls on them day after day, it's no wonder that they can fail. But if a woman uses an appropriately supportive bra, she can dramatically reduce the strain on her breasts. Unfortunately, research shows that as many as 90% of women wear the wrong bra.

The only thing harder on breasts than gravity is exercise. It can subject them to tremendous forces, damaging supporting ligaments and skin. Make sure you wear an appropriate sports bra every time you exercise. Your level of exercise is also an important thing to consider when deciding on the right size of breast implants.

We talk to all our breast surgery patients about what bras work best after breast surgery. (And, yes, you should wear a bra most of the time after your breast augmentation.) We will talk about sizing, fit, and whether you should consider bras designed specifically for breast augmentation patients.

Mammograms

Regular mammograms are recommended for women over 40 to screen for breast cancer. One concern some women have is that breast implants will make it less likely that cancer will be detected early, but if you work with an experienced screener, the chance of detecting precancerous growths is very high. And it can be improved still further when breast implants are placed behind the pectoral muscle.

Phoenix, Arizona plastic surgeon Dr. Paul Angelchik cares about his patients' whole-life health. To learn more about how this philosophy influences his approach to breast surgery, please contact us today for a breast enhancement consultation.