Keeping our most feminine assets in place

Because of their make-up, breasts are doomed to droop, but you can keep them perky for longer, says

CLEARLY, she was trying to look cutting-edge and youthful. But when 53-year-old Madonna bared one of her breasts on stage earlier this month, it also revealed a distressing reality for many women – saggy bosoms that have lost volume and pertness with age.

So what causes breasts to sag?

And can anything be done to keep our most feminine assets in their prime? Experts have their say.

Fighting gravity’s in your genes

No other part of the body is more affected by the force of gravity than the breasts.

From the moment a woman’s chest is fully grown, in her late teens to midtwenties, she faces an uphill battle to defy the downward pull.

The challenge is down to the fact that there’s not much of a natural support structure to keep them in place.

Breast specialist and surgeon, Ian Laidlaw, of Frimley Park Hospital, Surrey, UK, says drooping breasts can have a serious psychological impact on a woman.

He says: “A large part of a woman’s femininity is her breasts. Sagging is a predictable change, yet it can have a profound impact.

“The feelings women get when they can’t control the changes in their breasts can include inferiority, distorted body image, unattractiveness and worthlessness.”

The condition even has its own medical name – ptosis – and droopiness can be graded by doctors on a three-stage scale.

In pert, young breasts, the nipple is usually above the line where the base of the breast meets the chest – or the inframammary fold.

By stage two, the nipple is around 2.5cm to 7cm below that point. At stage three, the breast hangs more than 3cm below, with the nipple often pointing down to the floor.

Over a lifetime, a woman with heavy breasts may see her nipples drop by as much as 10cm or 11cm if they

There are two places where fat is found in the breast. Seventy percent of breast fat is mixed with the glands to form the main bulk of the bosom.

The rest of the fat is found in a layer of padding just under the skin. It’s this that tends to fluctuate in thickness as you gain and lose weight.

If this layer thickens dramatically – and then thins out again because of yo-yo dieting – it will permanently stretch the supporting skin, leading to a droopier chest. As women become more buxom, they are more likely to face sagging.

That’s because the rise is mainly because of an increase in fat content in the breasts – and fat is heavier and therefore harder to support.

Laidlaw says: “One of the best things you can do for your breasts is to maintain a constant body weight for your height that’s within the recommended range.”

Don’t worry about breast-feeding

Women have long blamed their saggy booby on breastfeeding.

Yet research has found that it’s the expansion and contraction of the milk glands triggered by pregnancy, rather

There’s both good and bad news when it