Over the years, I’ve found that many teens who develop the large, female-like breasts of gynecomastia, will gain needless weight on purpose to disguise their breasts. Sad as it may sound, it’s more acceptable in our culture for a boy to bulge all over due to overweight than to only bulge in his chest.

Still, male breast reduction surgery is possible. And I’ll be more encouraged than ever to perform the procedure if the boy admits he has been eating too much and promises to exercise and eat a more reasonable diet in the future.

Although many pediatricians and other surgeons prefer to be conservative and see if the condition just goes away, it’s very possible the youngster will suffer through his highly valuable teen years, waiting in vain.

But now, there is a new medical report out on teen gynecomastia patients observing male breast reduction surgery on obese and overweight boys.

I was also happy to see the researcher/ authors were plastic surgeons and experts in adolescent medicine at the Adolescent Breast Clinic at Children Hospital Boston and at Harvard.

The researchers studied the medical records of 69 teen boys who had male breast reduction surgery between 1997 and 2008. Writing in the April 2010 issue of Annual of Plastic Surgery, the authors noted they started the study because the roles of obesity or overweight on persistent gynecomastia are poorly understood.

The physician researchers were also sensitive to the fact that obese teens suffer greater psychological impacts.

Using the popular body mass index (BMI), the researchers carefully studied the records of 51 percent of patients who were obese, 16 percent who were overweight and 33 percent who were normal weight. (More about the gynecomastia study.)

They found major complications in four cases and minor complications in19.

Findings? The researchers found the obese patients required longer operations but that there was no different in the satisfaction of those patients or complications rates when compared to the normal weight group.

Conclusion? Obesity alone should not be used to rule out gynecomastia surgery.

Next: What does rule out teen gynecomastia surgery.

View teens’ before and after gynecomastia pictures.

After that, life for all gynecomastia patients is as predictable as it is miserable. Both boys and girls tease those kids without mercy because, really, boys are supposed to have flat, hard masculine chests.

Troy knows that wearing white will accentuate his large breasts so he takes great pains to dress in black or in large, baggy T-shirts with bold lettering. Of course, none of that will stop the daily badgering and belittling. And he dare not ever be seen with his shirt off.

The cruelest taunts of all include: “No girl wants a boyfriend with bigger boobs than she has!” and pointing fingers attached to others who shout  “Man boobs!”

Troy and his plastic surgeon, Elliot Jacobs, M.D., appeared on a recent television segment of The Doctors, along with Troy’s mom – who is now one very happy woman.

Why, you ask, is the mom so happy?

Because Troy had gynecomastia surgery about four weeks ago and is already enjoying the bliss of fitting in perfectly with his peers and not being singled out for a body feature that is seen by other teens as being something close to a freak of nature.

We can’t show you the actual television episode due to copyright restrictions but, thanks to the marvels of the Internet, we can provide a link at which you can watch Troy’s surgery as the actual breast tissue is surgically excised from his chest in a procedure also known as male breast reduction.

Watch the gynecomastia surgery at The Doctors’ website.

And for male breast reduction on a 15-year-old.

Be sure and watch for the cut-away model of a male breast with gynecomastia. It shows exactly how and where the problem occurs.

Before Male Breast Reduction Surgery

If you have a son in the teen years, you don’t want to miss Dr. Jacobs’ appearance on the nationally syndicated show, The Doctors on Monday, May 10^th.

Dr. Jacobs will be talking about adolescent gynecomastia and with one of his young patients who will comment on his own life and surgery shown in a film clip and some before and after gynecomastia surgery pictures.

If you’ve followed our blog posts, you know that large fleshy breasts on a teen boy can make his life a living hell.

The lad is:

• Belittled
• Ridiculed
• Shamed on a daily basis.

After Male Breast Reduction Surgery

This, at a time in life when a young man should be learning self-confidence, how to fit in with his peers and – above all – how to cope with the fairer gender. But instead, he spends all his time trying to hide his “man boobs.”

Sure, understanding girls and females can take the rest of any guy’s life. But a young man starts out completely behind the eight ball in the battle of the sexes if teen lasses reject him because no girl wants a boyfriend who has bigger boobs than she!

In New York, the show appears on WCBS-TV, channel 2 at 9 a.m.

In Los Angeles, The Doctors broadcasts on KCAL, channel 9 at 11:00 a.m.

To catch up on teens with gynecomastia, take a gander at our most recent posts on the topic:

• A cute teen girl in the school cafeteria pinches a boy with gynecomastia and asks what his bra cup size is.

• Teens ponder on telling others they have had male breast reduction surgery.

• Another teen with gynecomastia never left home because, if he socialized, he found “everybody staring at me.”

But in gynecomastia, the decisive moment can be the last straw that drives a teen or young man to make the decision to have male breast reduction surgery on his fleshy, female-like chest.

The excellent website, Gynecomastia.org has a forum in which males afflicted with “man boobs” recall their worst gynecomastia moments.

Not surprisingly, many deal with the lads’ experience with girls and women:

• A beautiful Russian woman and co-worker poked a guy in the chest and declared with a giggle to all present in a crowded bar : “You’ve got boobies!” Said the guy: “Any pre-surgery doubts I had went away in that second.”

• One wrote his gyno cost him the love of his life.

• Another was the victim of a sick practical joke. His buddies got together and arranged a blind date with a very attractive nurse…who was flat as a board. Neither the victim nor the nurse appreciated the stunt.

• In bed, a “hot girl” bluntly told her new boyfriend: “find a way to get rid of them boobs…” The same guy figures his gynecomastia is why he was still single at 36. (But he had gynecomastia surgery in 2008 and declared he now feels “new born.”)

• Wrote yet another: “In the seventh grade cafeteria, I was holding a tray of food in the cafeteria and a girl asked me what size cup I had. She was trying to pinch my breasts while I was trying not spill everything on the tray.”

Other guys can be no less cruel:

• ”At a union meeting, a guy who had been drinking grabbed my breast and yelled out: ‘Look at the tits on this guy!’ I wanted to crawl under a rock and die.”

• ”When I was 11, my friends called me ‘Breasts.’ Then in high school, I was known as ‘Chesty.’ I wanted to go home and cry each time; I know it has affected my self-esteem and confidence my whole life.”

• ”I had the nickname ‘Boobula’ in high school.”

• ”A group of friends in high school wrote in huge letters on my school notebook, ‘Logan Has Boobs!’ and that started me thinking about my gyno every single day. I’m 19 now, a college sophomore and am sending pictures of my chest to plastic surgeons for help.”

(model)

Read the comments on bulletin boards at gynecomastia.org and you’ll find that teens, younger and older men are often puzzled what to tell others about an upcoming male breast reduction surgery.

First: the law of the land governs your right to total medical privacy. That law, HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability Accounting Act) requires everybody to respect your medical privacy rights.

Sure, you have to explain an absence but “medical treatments” covers it.

Telling your parents?

Teens can point to the rash of teen suicides sprung in whole or in part by school bullies who cause yet other teens to live in utter misery due to an inherited body part that makes him look different.

So go ahead and tell your folks how having “man boobs” affects your life and how others bully or put you down.

In many cases, when a teen suffers, the parents suffer right along. (Read a heartfelt letter from a concerned mom with a 15-year-old who had gynecomastia.)

As for many Dads: They can be difficult at first because they worry about the family purse strings. Because they can see nothing is wrong with you, they may say no to surgery at first. But if you let your hair down with dad, and explain the meanness in your life, they often relent.

Many wonder how – or if — to break the news to their girlfriends.

Well, if you haven’t learned yet, let me clue you in: women love intimate conversation and knowing your innermost fears because they then feel closer to you. If you are humiliated, spell it all out for her, along with your plans for male breast reduction surgery.

She probably can already see you have some bulging on your chest and likes you nonetheless. And if she’s worth her salt, she’ll be the first to understand, support and see you through recovery.

Besides, it’s very difficult to hide your surgery recovery from an intimate.

And don’t think your case is the only one. If you read the bulletin boards and forums at gynecomastia.org, you’ll find kindred souls who are going through the exact same thing.

Skip ahead on those boards and you’ll find others who had the surgery; read how their lives, along with their self-confidence – have vastly improved.

Many describe gynecomastia surgery as having a huge weight lifted from their shoulders!

(Look at somebefore and after gynecomastia surgery pictures.)

While some pediatricians and even plastic surgeons are against it – thinking the lad may outgrow the condition – the teen patient’s life can be hellish if the condition does not go away. Others say the breasts may grow back after surgery. (They don’t!)

According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), 14,203 patients between 13 and 19 went under the knife in 2008 for male breast reduction.

(2009 statistics will be available soon.)

While I’m not a psychologist, anybody who hears these lads’ stories would conclude some damage is being done at a critical time in a young man’s life when he should be building self-confidence, not having his image torn down daily.

For the teen with large breasts (or “man boobs” as they are cruelly known) teasing and finger pointing can also destroy his fledgling ability to relate to both boys and girls.

Recently a teen gynecomastia patient complained of school bullies flicking his breasts as if he were a girl. And here’s what he said about his social life, which is usually very active for any teenager: “I don’t like going out because it seems like everybody is staring at me.”

It turned out that Tim’s father also suffered as a teen with large breasts and did not want to see his son go through the same thing.

One boy, pictured below, was only 12 when he and his family came to see me about male breast reduction surgery.  (Read The Post-Standard article from  Syracuse, N.Y. about teens with gynecomastia .) The after picture was taken in February, 2010.

After surgery, the youngster was so motivated, he lost 35 pounds through diet and exercise!

In another case, a mother wrote about her son whose breasts started growing when he was only 10.

Some female classmates said it would not be cool to have a boyfriend with bigger breasts than they had! Naturally, the lad was crushed.

(Read the touching letter of the mother whose son had gynecomastia.)

I’ve performed male breast reduction surgery on over 175 teens and recommend it, if certain diagnostic criteria exists like:

• Stability for at least two years.

Breast size have not changed

• Being emotionally mature.

He must understand treatment is an operation, with all that entails.

(Read more about when teens should have gynecomastia surgery.)

It dawned on me later that Dr. Adams filmed me and one of my teen patients back in October of 2007.

I mention it because it’s one of the few filmed pieces I’ve seen that actually shows the breast, or glandular, tissue seen in gynecomastia.

The video follows a 15-year-old who loves sports but at 12 or 13 developed a serious case of gynecomastia, with very pronounced, female-like breasts that were hard to hide, even under heavy T-shirts.

Most days, he wore a compression garment as a T-shirt to conceal his pubescent-like breasts.

The problem? Sports were out of the question. As was taking off his shirt in public.

One of the charms of Plastic Surgery: Before and After was that, unlike most television shows about plastic surgery, Dr. Adams intended his programs  for adults and showed unfiltered, close-up segments of actual plastic surgery.

But most other programs blur or blank out surgical scenes as if they were X-rated sexual content.

The concept was not to make viewers lose their lunch by filming endless gore, but to show just enough to put across a teaching moment.

When Dr. Adams and crew filmed me operating on the teen, they showed how much work it was to liposuction out the fatty tissue from his breasts.

When it came to removing the actual glandular breast tissue, they zoomed in close and captured the look of the bone-white breast tissue as it was excised from the lad’s chest.

Glandular tissue is far too thick for liposuction.

The rest of the operation went well, the youngster healed and returned home where he could once again indulge in all the sports he wanted while taking no care at all about hiding his chest.

In fact, I think Dr. Adams’ film crew gave other gynecomastia sufferers a moment of supreme elation for the many youngsters who live in that world.

They filmed my patient gladly and willingly doffing his shirt to play basketball.

Why is that noteworthy, you ask?

For gynecomastia-stricken teens, hearing the command “Shirt and skins!” from a phys ed teacher is a moment of sheer terror!

“Skins” must peel off their shirts and then jump up and down, playing basketball. And that puts all eyes on their jiggling breasts.

Here’s the video:

But don’t let that word “educational” throw you – The Plastic Surgery Channel is also entertaining and covers the hottest topics.

If the program is not on your channel lineup yet, keep watching because the channel is new, hungry, growing and fun to watch!

The channel was kind enough to conduct one of their first interviews with me, talking about adult and teen gynecomastia, the condition in which males have abnormally large, smallish female-like breasts. Some people refer to them as “man boobs” or “moobs.”

Here’s the interview: Correcting Teen Gynecomastia

So far, the Plastic Surgery Channel has mostly interviewed board-certified plastic surgeons. And how do you spot one of those?

Next time, I’ll give you some inside tips on finding one, straight from Park Avenue!