breast tenderness

[ChanelMK]

ive been on hormones for about 3 months, and my chest so far is killing me, they hurt so bad, what do i do?

[Jill F]

I gently massage them when it gets to be too much.

Mine are killing me today and I had to shelve my cardio because of it.   Hopefully it gets better tomorrow.

[Mona]

I've been on HRT for 2 months and just 3 days ago I woke up with very tender nipples.  No buds yet, but soreness definitely there!  I didn't think anything was happening.  No visual changes, though.  Breasts don't hurt until poked or prodded.

[Hikari]

Well the good part is the pain goes away.....then it comes back, wait is that such a good thing 

The only real thing I have noticed seems to make it better is to sleep on my back, which is somewhat hard but if I roll over and squish them against the mattress it will wake me right up lol. What has amazed me is that I had real pain on the second week of my new regimine on a very small dose of E only. Now that I am on Spiro they are hurting more which means they are growing more, but they look less full, but so does my face and such as well I guess I can attribute that to the diuretic properties of the stuff.

[Ms Grace]

I mentioned the to the cis woman who was doing my body wax the other day that my nipples were a bit tender as a hint to go particularly careful. She said "oh I do guys all the time"...despite me telling her I was trans* and the fact my chest definitely no longer looks male. I pushed the point home, saying that the hormones make the breast development painful like teen genetic girls through puberty. She got it then! "Oh my god, isn't that like the most painful thing?!" Needless to say she was quite careful when waxing around my breasts.

I only say this story as a way of saying welcome to womanhood. If you ever wondered why cis girls become so protective of their chests when going through puberty now you know.

But sorry, I have no remedy for you...

[AnneB]

I guess I'm fortunate then, or maybe its the differences in the method of development.. I've been on herbals for 5months, and have a B size.. amazingly, they have not hurt in all this time.. they have ached tho, and itched like crazy, but have not hurt.  I do the massage every 3-4 days or so.. so maybe that has kept them from hurting.  idk..  but not really any pain, or great tenderness.

[kira21 ♡♡♡]

I think, and this is opinion, but I have a fair amount of research on breast development and hormone scripts, that a large amount of the breast pain above what a phenotypical female would experience is caused by sudden changes in hormones. Phenotypical females do not experience sudden changes and breast development happens more gradually.

The idea that we should not just *BAM!!* hit our body with full strength HRT is popular in the UK, for reasons of better over all breast development.

Slower will be more natural, promote maximum potential breast growth, cause less pain and reduce chances of stretch-marks.

Progesterone has also been shown to help in this respect. Also masaging is a good idea for even shaped and more natural shaped development.

[KayXo]

Very good post Kira. I totally agree!

Also to add to this, I've noticed that pain and stretch marks tend to occur when I only take estrogen versus when I take estrogen+progesterone. The latter makes my breasts less hard, more bouncy too.

[AnneB]

I wonder , then.. if indeed it is the difference btwn herbal and drug/bioindentical hormones for growth pain.  Herbals tend (well, in my case) to be advertzed as slower, but steady growth. Still lots faster than cis-girls development but slower than drug based. But these B's have been growing since early October.. pretty fast but still don't hurt if bumped. As you wrote, it could be the combination of speed, gland/duct growth.  One thing is for certain with me.. my right side is a def. B+ while my left boob is an A-  I guess that's normal for one to experience faster than the other.

[KayXo]

Herbals or phytoestrogens (not to be confused with phenotypical) are much weaker (in 1000 x times) than bio-identical estradiol which is what we take and what womens' ovaries produce. These will barely produce any changes, can cause harm as they are not standardized and in doses needed to produce any change at all, may lead to health complications. The only way to ensure that we have an effective and safe "second puberty", we require estradiol, similar to ciswomen. This will definitely kickstart feminization and development...just that we don't need to start with a high dose but with the lowest effective dose for us that will start to trigger changes in us and stay there for as long as changes keep happening. Slowly but surely.

[AnneB]

'wont get into the drug/herbal/he said/she said battle, I agree herbals can be weaker, slower, but as to being ineffective or dangerous.. my body changes will def argue that point.   

[Jenna Marie]

Heh. My personal friends circle only, NOT scientific, but when I complained that they were aching - pretty much all of my cis female friends winced and said they remembered those days. I think some cis girls must get the hormone fluctuations and steep spikes, too, based on how moody a lot of teenage girls get...

As for how to help with the pain, I recommend a sports bra or other soft supportive bra. Advil also helped for me personally; don't know why, I am not a doctor, please don't consider this medical advice, but it did take the edge off.

[KayXo]

Quite the opposite for me. All of the cisgirls I spoke to say they don't ever remember experiencing pain during puberty. However, pain on the pill seems quite common.

[Jenna Marie]

Yeah, PMS breast tenderness is *really* common. I think it's also due to hormones, but presumably not to growth per se. (Of course, the Pill can also cause growth... it's a listed side effect on some of them.)