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.

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.”