Schwarzeneggger in his Training Heyday

If you follow weight lifting and body building news, you’ll frequently see exceedingly chiseled, buff body builders looking for answers about their puffy nipples.

They wonder if liposuction or gynecomastia surgery will make them look better.

Read the concern about gynecomastia surgery and problems one weight lifter encountered when he found a growth about 75 percent the size of a golf ball under one nipple.

Bottom line: there would be no puffy nipples in body builders if they took no steroids!

Our last post gave one example of terribly misleading information about gynecomastia surgery.

But the trend continues in body building blogs.

“Insiders” often provide bogus, half-truth and downright misleading information to body builders about various hormonal supplements, anabolic steroids and other compounds they should take to grow enormous muscles.

They also provide info about how to deal with side effects like puffy nipples – by self-treating with additional drugs.

When you see one of these guys with huge, chiseled muscles – like the attached picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger in his competing heyday — be assured, it is virtually impossible to get that large without some artificial help. These men also have a very low body fat ratio – a result of severe dietary restrictions that most normal guys cannot adhere to.

Also rest assured manipulation of one’s hormones will create enormous muscles – but at a steep price.

Here’s why: taking extra hormones causes a man’s hormone system to sense that there is plenty of male hormone already on hand. So the guy’s body shuts down its own production of testosterone.

Result? Large muscles grow while the testes can actually shrink away!

Sometimes, the extra testosterone is changed to the female hormone estrogen, causing gynecomastia on a very muscular chest, a condition known in gyms as “bitch tits”.

The cure? Only gynecomastia surgery. And it’s not minor; the surgery for puffy nipples is just as complicated and demanding as any other male breast reduction surgery.

Another bottom line: even the best MD endocrinologists have difficulty regulating patients’ hormones, using all the scientific tools of the trade like frequent blood tests to monitor hormone levels.

The worst possible move: do-it-yourself hormone supplementation without physician supervision and frequent blood tests to check on your hormones. The old saying, “A patient who treats himself has a fool for a doctor” applies.

Believe me, there are worse things that puffy nipples!

Steroid use also causes long term problems. Remember Lyle Alzado? He was a pro football player who ended his life at age 43 due to brain cancer that many doctors believe was induced by bulking with anabolic steroids.

Other organs can be affected as well. Steroid users are almost guaranteed to develop “short fuse” temper flare ups – the so-called “’roid rage.”

Here are before and after pictures of gynecomastia surgery to repair a bodybuilder’s puffy nipples.

More men in the United Kingdom (UK) are having their “moobs,” (short for man boobs) reduced through the procedure known as gynecomastia surgery.

The British Association of Aesthetic Surgeons (BAAPS) says the procedure to produce a more masculine, flat chest increased 44 percent in the UK during 2008 – despite the recession.

In the United States, 17,902 men had gynecomastia surgery in 2008, according the American Association of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

And it’s not a cheap procedure! In the UK, gynecomastia surgery costs an average $6,922.00. (Read more about the report that includes male breast surgical reduction.)

But why would more patients be showing up in surgeons’ offices with large male breasts in the first place?

It may literally be something in the water.

Back in 2005, British surgeons and others studied water supplies and found that, while the water was clean, it nonetheless contained an unusually high concentration of female hormones. The source?  Birth control pills for women. Also, hormones are given to many large farm animals. All that can leach into the water.

(Read more about hormones causing gynecomastia.)

Could a similar situation be happening in the United States? Possibly. Some scientists have found populations of fish in which the males are developing female characteristics.

Gynecomastia can also be caused by:

• Use of illicit street drugs
• Side effects of some medical treatments
• Having large amounts of the female hormone, estrogen
• True female breast tissue that is too sensitive to even small amounts of estrogen

With 1,450 gynecomastia treatments via surgery under my belt, I have noticed that true breast tissue in males looks under the microscope identical to that of females. But the tissue is very dense and hard and can not be liposuctioned. Instead, it is removed surgically.

Take a look at how some males and teens look, before and after, in their gynecomastia pictures.

T.V. comedian Seinfeld once touched on the issue in a show, telling a large chested male friend, he should not wear a bra for gynecomastia, but a “bro.”

However, in real life, male breast enlargement in a young lad or is anything but a laughing matter.

We’ll touch more on some actual cases, next post.