Shape change and bump on areola

Hi, I'm 17 and I noticed my areola looked smaller? I know that the size of our areola fluctuates with hormone changes and temperature but the change was noticeable. I also noticed a lump on the areola, it looks like skin that has been pinched and hasn't gone down.

I'm an oberthinker but I'm worried about visiting the GP again as I already have multiple times for unrelated reasons, I don't want to seem annoying.

  • Hello and thanks for your post

    Whenever someone contacts us with something that is worrying them we always suggest they go back and see their GP to get checked out to be on the safe side. They will examine you and will hopefully put your mind at ease.

    But I don’t think you need to be overly concerned as breast cancer would be very rare in someone of your young age. The symptoms you have are much more likely to be caused by ordinary everyday problems that teenagers may get from time to time. This can often be related to hormonal changes.

    Breast changes like lumps in the areola are very common in young girls. As your breasts are still developing, changes may develop and these are nearly always due to normal changes in the breast tissue. But, I appreciate it can still be worrying when you find differences in how your breasts look or feel.

    The organisation Breast Cancer Now has some information about what is normal at this link . They also have some more information for teenagers here.

    I hope this helps and everything turns out to be okay.

    Kind regards,

    Celene