The breast is the upper ventral region of the torso of a primate, in left and right sides, which in a female contains the mammary gland that secretes milk used to feed infants.
Both men and women develop breasts from the same embryological tissues. However, at puberty, female sex hormones, mainly estrogen, promote breast development, which does not occur in men, due to the higher amount of testosterone. As a result, women's breasts become far more prominent than those of men.
During pregnancy, the breast is responsive to a complex interplay of hormones that cause tissue development and enlargement in order to produce milk. Three such hormones are estrogen, progesterone and prolactin, which cause glandular tissue in the breast and the uterus to change during the menstrual cycle.
Each breast contains 15–20 lobes. The subcutaneous adipose tissue covering the lobes gives the breast its size and shape. Each lobe is composed of many lobules, at the end of which are sacs where milk is produced in response to hormonal signals.
Read more about Breast: Etymology, Development
Other articles related to "breast, breasts":
... Mastopexy (Greek μαστός mastos “breast” + -pēxiā “affix”) is the mammoplasty procedure for correcting the size, contour, and elevation of sagging breasts upon the chest ... In a breast-lift surgery to re-establish an aesthetically proportionate bust for the woman, the critical corrective consideration is the tissue viability of the ... The breast-lift correction of a sagging bust is a plastic surgery operation that cuts excess tissues (glandular, adipose, skin), overstretched suspensory ligaments, and excess skin from the ...
... because of the post-partum volume losses of fat and milk-gland tissues, and the occurrence of breast ptosis ... of laxness of the suspensory Cooper’s ligaments and of the breast skin-envelope (mild, moderate, severe, and pseudo ptosis) — determine the applicable restorative ... Grade I (mild) breast ptosis can be corrected solely with breast augmentation, surgical and non-surgical ...
... The woman is pictured with an oriental style hat and bare breasts ... She is making the gesture to cover her left breast, or to turn it with her hand, and is illuminated by a strong artificial light coming from the external ... It has been suggested that the right hand on the left breast reveals a cancerous breast tumour disguised in a classic pose of love ...
... In Christian iconography, some works of art depict women with their breasts in their hands or on a platter, signifying that they died as a martyr by having their breasts severed one ...
... noticeable benefit and some phytoestrogens may present a breast cancer risk ... in early adolescence may protect against breast cancer later in life ... The potential risks of isoflavones on breast tissue in women at high risk for breast cancer is still unclear ...
Famous quotes containing the word breast:
“So if hunger provokes wailing and wailing brings the breast; if the breast permits sucking and milk suggests its swallow; if swallowing issues in sleep and stomachy comfort, then need, ache, message, object, act, and satisfaction are soon associated like charms on a chain; shortly our wants begin to envision the things which well reduce them, and the organism is finally said to wish.”
—William Gass (b. 1924)
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Through light-obliterating garden foliage what magic drum?
Down limb and breast or down that glimmering belly move his mouth and sinewy tongue.
What from the forest came? What beast has licked its young?”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)