Progesterone Breast Growth

Progesterone Breast Growth. Men and women both have mammary glands so what's the difference well we saw that they'd have the ducts and the differences in size but the big difference is that when do mammary glands develop they typically develop during puberty so before puberty they they're pretty much identical in boys and girls before they develop they undergo puberty so they have the basic structure of undeveloped mammary gland but it's the changes in puberty that caused the development of mammary glands now what happens is that you have an increase in pro estrogens and progestogens in p when you start off the menstrual cycle and um and a girl has her first menarche her first menstrual cycle that's when you start to have that cyclical waves of estrogens and progesterone but what happens in male puberty is that you have increased levels of androgens you do have some estrogens and aromatase as well but this is things like you'll get increased high levels of androgens in female development as you do in male development.

So androgens they can be converted to aromatase but androgens actually suppress the development of mammary glands so again sometimes you do get occasional estrogen spill over and sometimes this does cause what we call gynecomastia in me in men and what happens is that you can't get puffiness i didn't get this personally but i've heard like some boys who undergo puberty they have swollen or tender breasts because of this increased estrogens and due to aromatase but usually this is temporary so as a woman undergoes uh or undergoing puberty she undergoes multiple menstrual cycles these estrogens and the surgeon estrogens and progesterone are going to cause the development of breast tissue and mammary glands and so these ducts are going to branch off and form more lobules and as we have the menstrual cycle every month this is going to cause the development of more branches and lobules until we have a developed mammary gland again what's happening in the male breast over here with the androgens this keeps in check so again this doesn't eliminate the mammary gland altogether it's just undeveloped in typical male anatomy with mammary gland structure so what we have are basically mammary glands are a network of ducts but also the two basic components of a mammary gland are ducts and lobules so ducks are just like a duck that carries air or something in your vent these instead carry milk so estrogens actually stimulate the development of these ducts that carry milk in the mammary glands.

So these estrogens like estradiol they're going to cause the formation and branching of these ducts now lobules these are the ones that actually produce milk so what progesterone is actually stimulates the development of lobules and what the structures we call alveoli now not the same thing as the alveoli in our lungs but alveoli refers to anything that's kind of like that ball or grape shape so these alveoli these contain cells that will eventually secrete and produce milk when a woman lactates so then again so progesterone promotes development of lobules estrogens promote the formation of ducts and hey what two hormones are are the primary female sex hormones progestogens and estrogens all right so then that's what happens here so as you have all this estrogens and progesterone this causes the development of the mammary gland and female anatomy and this is what we have here so again estrogens and progesterone and estrogen and progesterone now the interesting thing is that at this point like post-puberty the breasts aren't actually fully developed something special has to happen before a breast is actually fully developed and what has to happen is that this needs to happen hey we have an egg and something's going to happen to that egg oh we have someone sneaking in here and fertilizing that egg and say it's a successful fertilization and implantation and now we finally have a fetus growing in here so what happens to happen before if breast is fully developed is that you have to have be pregnant now what happens during pregnancy many things happen during pregnancy but what happens to those the concentration of estrogen estradiol and progesterone is that they actually go through the roof.

They actually go higher than they ever would during a typical woman's menstrual cycle so they keep climbing as estrogens and with progesterone start to climb then they're going to get development of more ducts and more lobules so what's that going to do well that's going to cause more development of more tissue so this is why in a typical pregnancy a woman will have initial growth in the mammary glands so that's what we have is so yeah those estrogens and progesterone which are the hormones that drive the development of mammary glands they're going to drive the further development of mammary glands in anticipation for when the woman gives birth pregnant and yeah when she undergoes labor and starts breastfeeding it prepares the breast for that initi that additional tissue they need to free feed their child okay so then now just in general so single duck have multiple lobes and each has us what we call lactiferous duct so again these lobules are going to make the the milk that's that's going to be lactate and you need something to carry it out to the external environment to feed the baby and this is a lactiferous duct and it's a black and also just before the duct it has something called the lactiferous sinus so it's not just like constantly dripping you can actually store a bit of this in the sinus and then through well.

We don't have time for the milk lit down reflex i think we did cover it maybe in the endocrine system and positive feedback but there's about 15 to 20 sinuses per nipples so that's what we have here all these lobules all these ducts and then in a pregnant woman's breast tissue what we have with during lactation well there's also another protein called or actually a protein and hormone called prolactin so prolactin is actually going to trigger the production of of milk and then through the milk let down reflex and production you're going to have this ejection of this milk and this is how you breastfeed now the thing is that is this permanent well no it's not permanent thing is that if say a woman likes it and she wants to keep it well things that once she gives birth then these num levels of progesterone and estrogen they come crashing back down or i shouldn't say crashing back down they come back down to the normal levels they were during the menstrual cycle so without this additional estrogens and progesterone this doesn't allow them to keep the extra tissue that they have so this process is called involution so this is why once a woman gives birth and she doesn't have these high levels of extra estradiol and progesterone the breasts return to normal and or actually in terms of like the shape might have changed like multiple things might have changed but the size and mass of these lobules and these glands don't remain.