“I have to wear three bras to go for a run – my breasts have got so big and sore!” she cried as she left a message on my phone. “They’ve never been this big in my life and I hate how it’s uncomfortable to run.”
My personal trainer friend was frustrated. How this bought back memories for me. When my own breast size doubled as I reached my late 40s and early 50s, I was mystified.
Nobody had told me about the effect of changing hormones on my breast tissue. It seems nobody had told my friend either.
Whilst we all need to have breast checks as we move through menopause, because the risk of breast cancer increases the older you are, if you have heavy, tender, lumpy breasts, then have a read as I know how uncomfortable this issue is for many women.
Research attention has been focused on breast tissue for a number of years, because the fat tissue in breasts also plays a major role in the development and progression of breast cancer. In Australia alone, breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer for women aged 40 – 59 years. [AIHW, Cancer Data, 2024].
Hence, if you are menopausal or post-menopausal and haven’t had your breast tissue checked, then now is the stage of life to get this done, don’t you think?
Breast adipose tissue is important. Fat covers most of the breast from the collarbone to the underarm and around the center of the ribcage. Its main function is to help sustain the breast micro-environment, storing excess energy and releasing it when required by the body.
One of the main reasons for those of us with large breasts experiencing an increase in size of breasts in midlife, is that breast tissue is producing a considerable amount of oestrogens.
This is what fat tissue does – it has its own micro-environment for producing oestrogen. In fact, breast adipose (fat) tissue contains E1 type of oestrogen and levels in the breast exceed those in the serum by eight times [Yaghjyan & Colditz, 2011].
Hence, from peri-menopause to post-menopause, changes can occur in the breast environment, and for larger women, this may feel uncomfortable.
Lumpy, tender breasts are known as Fibrocystic Breasts. These occur when tiny, fluid-filled sacs form in the milk-producing glands and become swollen and tender.
Women may notice this in post-menopause too. And don’t forget that the lymphatic vessels are also ageing and losing elasticity, so this may impact how the breast tissue feels too.
Furthermore, interesting research out of Sweden, which explored the breast density of post-menopause women, found that dense breast tissue in postmenopausal women is associated with a pro-inflammatory microenvironment. (Abrahamsson, Rzepecka et al, 2016).

Having tight, sore boobs is uncomfortable to say the least. Like many women I spent hundreds of dollars on new bra’s and exercised and ate well, but still my breast size increased and so did the pain.
It wasn’t until I learnt that our breast tissue is full of oestrogen receptors as well as lymphatic vessels, that I began to understand that by giving up a few foods, and improving both lymphatic and liver health, the lumpy breasts do resolve.
BREAST LYMPHATIC VESSELS ARE ALSO AGEING
During menopause, your lymphatic vessels are ageing. As such, they begin to lose some elasticity.
This combination of changing lymphatic vessels and the receptiveness of breast tissue to excess oestrogen production can cause the fat cells in the breast tissue to expand. This may contribute to swelling and tension.

Our breast tissue has a high number of oestrogen receptors.
And whilst, our ovarian production of oestrogen declines during menopause, our breasts may become responsive to the storage of xeno-oestrogens – this is the term given to environmental oestrogens and excess oestrogens in certain foods and medications.
Breast tissue can attract storage of these additional oestrogens too.
For those of you who are on breast cancer treatments as Lyndie was, understanding this additional capacity of breast tissue to attract exogenous (external) oestrogens is important. Because the more oestrogenic compounds that are stored, and/or produced in fat tissue, the more the fat cells expand, contributing to oestrogen dominance.

What happens when you are oestrogen dominant?
Perhaps the most important consideration of oestrogen dominance as we move through menopause, is that the extra storage of oestrogen in tissues may contribute to an imbalance with oestrogens opposing hormone, called progesterone.
Both oestrogen and progesterone are ideally balanced as your reproductive hormones decline at this stage of life. When oestrogen is stored in fat cells, including breast tissue, then it becomes the dominant hormone compared to it’s opposing hormone, called progesterone.
If progesterone levels are low compared to oestrogen (because there is excess fat cell storage of oestrogen), the consequence of lowered progesterone is that cell membrane function and your fluid balance may become impaired. If you feel bloated, tight, puffy and your breasts are sore, heavy and huge, then welcome to oestrogen dominance.
Low levels of progesterone, causes sodium and water retention in cells and tissues. In turn, this can increase your blood pressure too.
So, if you feel that your breasts are tight and swollen and you’ve gone up a bra size or three as I did, then please read on. It’s what I needed to know when it happened to me!
When sodium is retained, so is water. Sodium retention in cells causes an imbalance of fluid movement in and out of cells.
The ‘puffiness’, bloating and swelling you may be experiencing is water retention and it’s not good for those women already at risk of high blood pressure.
Other symptoms of oestrogen dominance also start to be felt – sore and tender breasts, mood disturbances, low motivation, irritability and of course, weight gain, especially around the middle.

My 3 top strategies to relieve your tight, tender breasts
- Reduce animal foods in your diet. Many of these are high in oestrogen and have a higher acidic load, which places strain on kidneys. This is measured as PRAL or Potential Renal Acid Load. It’s not forever, but changing your diet to mainly plant-based food helps to ‘break the circuit’ of your oestrogen dominance. This is because you are reducing saturated fats, which breast tissue loves to store.

2. Restore your liver health. As thousands of women on the MyMT™ programmes know, I have a big focus on liver health and share with them, the scientific evidence on how to detoxify the liver. Your liver is the main organ which helps to clear excess oestrogenic compounds as well as cholesterol, so certain foods are evidenced to help with this detoxification process. Foods include oats, broccoli or broccolini, cauliflower, apples, tomatoes and more!

- Improve lymphatic drainage. Your lymphatic system is an important toxin-removal system and during menopause, your lymphatic vessels lose some of their elasticity. A healthy lymphatic system as you age means that you move fluid in and out of cells more easily and you help your blood pressure too. This is why stretching, breathing and some physical activity is important for you in menopause – swimming is my activity of choice when it comes to lymphatic exercise, as is low-impact aerobic exercise, until you are sleeping and have stopped your weight gain and have more energy.

Over 80% of the 500,000 women who have taken my Menopause Symptom Quiz, state that they are overweight.
If this is you, and you’ve been struggling to keep check on your weight, then will you join me on my New Year January intake of the My Menopause Transformation Transform Me program? It’s on sale for you now.
You will love what you learn and love how you feel.
This 12 week online coaching programme has helped thousands of women around the world lose their unhealthy menopause and post-menopause weight.
Each module comes with integrated lifestyle solutions for restoring your sleep, so you burn fat overnight, reducing hot flushes, restoring your liver and gut health, as well as, reducing inflammation in your joints, so you can move more freely.
You also learn how to turn around oestrogen dominance, a condition which keeps you in fat-storing mode as you transition through menopause. Even if you are in post-menopause, then this powerful programme is for you and you can also go on to then do my new Beyond Menopause programme to continue working on your health as you age.
Both Transform Me and Beyond Menopause are developed from my women’s healthy ageing studies and my own desire to take back control of weight gain in menopause.
If you have felt frustrated and despondent about uncontrollable weight gain and you are experiencing increased bloating, hot flushes, moods swings, sore joints or gut health changes, then this ‘Transform ME’ New Year sale is for you.
From now until the end of January 2025 you can save up to NZ$400 in my biggest sale of the year.
Dr Wendy Sweet,(PhD)/ MyMT Founder/ Member:Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine
References:
Abrahamsson A, Rzepecka A, Romu T, Borga M, Leinhard OD, Lundberg P, Kihlberg J, Dabrosin C. (2016). Dense breast tissue in postmenopausal women is associated with a pro-inflammatory microenvironment in vivo. Oncoimmunology. 5(10):e1229723. doi: 10.1080/2162402X.2016.1229723. PMID: 27853653; PMCID: PMC5087296.
Kothari C, Diorio C, Durocher F. The Importance of Breast Adipose Tissue in Breast Cancer. Int J Mol Sci. 2020 Aug 11;21(16):5760. doi: 10.3390/ijms21165760.
Monteiro R, Teixeira D, Calhau C. Estrogen signaling in metabolic inflammation. (2014). Mediators Inflamm. 615917. doi: 10.1155/2014/615917. Epub 2014 Oct 23. PMID: 25400333; PMCID: PMC4226184.
Walker RA, Martin CV. The aged breast. J Pathol. 2007 Jan;211(2):232-40. doi: 10.1002/path.2079.
Yaghjyan L, Colditz GA. (2011). Estrogens in the breast tissue: a systematic review. Cancer Causes Control. 22(4):529-40. doi: 10.1007/s10552-011-9729-4. Epub 2011 Feb 1. PMID: 2128680