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Natural Health and Herbal Remedies Blog
information on herbal medicine
BODY SIGNAL ALERT DISCHARGE FROM BREAST: TREATMENT
Your doctor’s diagnosis depends on the color of the discharge, along with a recent history of your health practices, though in the women and men who get galactotrrhea with no cleat cause, the condition will usually clear up on its own without treatment. However, your doctor may want to order a test that will check the levels of thyroid hormones and prolactin in your blood. She may also want to conduct an MRI or CAT scan of your brain to check for a pituitary tumor.
If you’ve given birth in the past year, your discharge is white, and your doctor can find no reason for the galactorrhea, it’s probably not serious. If, however, you’ve never had children and you have a whitish discharge from your nipples, your doctor will look for medication to be the culprit; the discharge might also be a sign of an underlying endocrine disorder. To see if this is the case, she will run blood tests and perhaps a CAT scan to see if your hypothalamus—a gland that regulates your endocrine system—or your pituitary gland is damaged in some way. If the cause of your galactorrhea is found to be hypothyroidism, she will prescribe a thyroxine replacement medication such as Synthroid. The dosage of this medication depends on the results of blood tests that are taken over the course of several weeks or months and will be adjusted slowly when your doctor determines how your body is tolerating the medication.
If the condition is determined to be a side effect of a medication you’re taking, your doctor will recommend you stop taking the drug and may switch you to another type of medication.
If the discharge is greenish or brown—indicating a bloody tinge— you should see your doctor immediately. Your galactorrhea may be caused by cancer or another kind of tumor in the breasts.
If your doctor decides that a pituitary tumor is causing the galactorrhea, she may suggest you take a drug called bromocriptine, which will attack the tumor and reduce the gland’s production of prolactin. If the tumor has grown too large to treat with bromocriptine, he will probably want to remove it surgically. To ensure that the pituitary gland stays tumor free after surgery, your doctor will probably recommend that you take bromocriptine for several months after the operation.
Bromocriptine is typically prescribed to treat some of the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease; however, it also serves to suppress the production of prolactin.
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